Skip to content
Valice Press
Photograph of Karin Kallmaker
Judy Franseconi · CC0, released by the subject · Licence · Wikimedia Commons

Sapphic romance

Karin Kallmaker

born 1960

Called the "Queen of Lesbian Romance"; author of Painted Moon and Just Like That.

Born
1960 · Sacramento, California
Nationality
American
  • lesbian romance
  • Austen retelling
  • science fiction
  • Golden Crown Literary Society

A reference author. Valice Press has no connection with Karin Kallmaker, their publishers or their estate. Karin Kallmaker appears here as part of the reading context around the shelf.

Biography

The life, briefly

Karin Kallmaker is an American author of lesbian romance, erotica and science fiction/fantasy, some of it written under the pen name Laura Adams. She has described publishing exclusively in the lesbian market as a matter of personal choice, and has been dubbed the Queen of Lesbian Romance.

Her debut, In Every Port (1989), set part of its story around the assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978, and her books have followed the history of the lesbian community ever since. Katherine V. Forrest was an early mentor, and Kallmaker's fifth novel, Painted Moon, was hailed as "the next Curious Wine".

Works

Major works

  1. 1989In Every Porther debut novel
  2. 1991Touchwoodher second novel
  3. 1994Painted Moonhailed as "the next Curious Wine"
  4. 1998Christabelfirst written as Laura Adams, a retelling of Coleridge's poem in which the women win; revised in 2008
  5. 2003Maybe Next Timewon a Lambda Literary Award
  6. 2005Just Like Thata lesbian retelling of Pride and Prejudice

Timeline

Turning points

  1. 1988

    Graduated from California State University, Sacramento, with a B.A. in business administration.

  2. 1989

    Published her first novel, In Every Port.

  3. 1994

    Published Painted Moon, one of her most popular novels.

  4. 1998

    Published Christabel as Laura Adams, dedicated to the scholar Jeannette Howard Foster.

  5. 2003

    Maybe Next Time won a Lambda Literary Award.

Why they are here

Karin Kallmaker and the shelf

Relevance

Kallmaker works in the romance form on purpose and with a sense of its tradition: Just Like That retells Austen, Christabel retells Coleridge, and Painted Moon was written in the line of Forrest's Curious Wine. She is a good example of a writer who treats genre conventions as something to play with rather than apologise for.

Influence

Her Golden Crown Literary Society and Lambda Literary Foundation award-winning books have made her one of the best-known names in contemporary lesbian romance.

Nearby on the shelf

If you read this, you might look here

These are Valice Press titles from the same part of the library. They are not by Karin Kallmaker, and they are not a recommendation on Karin Kallmaker’s behalf — only the same shelf.

Related authors

Read alongside

Sources

Where this comes from

Everything on this page about Karin Kallmaker is written from these sources, not from memory. Their dates and key claims were checked against the sources on 8 October 2026.The life dates are compared across Wikidata and the Library of Congress’s authority records.