I arrived in Ireland in 1993, just as the decriminalisation bill was signed into law, and friends steered me towards Lesbians Organising Together (LOT), which had set up a publishing group to improve lesbian representation, particularly in GCN. Among them were Íde O’Carroll and Anita Thoma, who was already working at GCN but deeply involved with LOT.
LOT Publishing Group, left to right: Kathleen Comerford, Bernie Carolan, Anita Thoma, Deborah Ballard, Ide O’Carroll, Jane Coulson
We met GCN’s publishers, the NLGF, and asked for stronger lesbian representation in all sections of the paper, but this was not seen as feasible by the NLGF and GCN. However, they did agree to reserve two pages for lesbian content, provided LOT could guarantee copy to fill them. To ensure this, I was made responsible to GCN’s then editor, Richie Prendergast, and was put on the FÁS scheme as the Lesbian Pages editor.