By Deborah Craig–
Sally Gearhart was a toweringly brilliant woman I encountered quite by accident. I teach Public Health at SF State and am a filmmaker too. While helping LGBTQ public health expert Mickey Eliason with a study of lesbian health, I met so many perceptive and funny women that I began a short documentary about lesbians and aging. Mickey’s collaborator Penny Sablove mentioned an octogenarian she knew still living on women’s land in Northern California and cutting her own firewood with a chainsaw. Naturally, I zoomed up to meet her.
At this point, I knew little about Sally other than the chainsaw anecdote. But I trekked to Willits with my camerawoman Silvia Turchin in the summer of 2014 to find out more. Though 83, Sally kept us on our toes. She expounded on topics from aging to feminism to gay rights to environmentalism. She recited poetry and prose. She took us with her beloved dog Bodhi on a walk in the local woods where we scrambled to keep up with her. And we
Sally Miller Gearhart, lesbian writer and activist, dies at 90
The Wanderground is a speculative fiction novel by Sally Miller Gearhart, published in 1978 by Persephone Press.
by Annabelle Williams
(NYT NEWS SERVICE)
.- Sally Miller Gearhart, a feminist, lesbian activist and prominent opponent of anti-gay policies whose writings included a classic of lesbian science fiction about a women-only society, much like the one she later founded in Northern California, died July 14 in Ukiah, California. She was 90.
Deborah Craig, a friend and the producer of a forthcoming documentary film about Gearhart, confirmed her death.
Gearhart rose to prominence in the 1970s when she campaigned with Harvey Milk, a San Francisco city supervisor and the first openly gay politician elected in California, against Proposition 6, a ballot measure that would have banned gay and lesbian teachers from public schools.