''Valencia'' is a 2000

Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature.The awards were instituted i ...

-winning novel by

Michelle Tea Michelle Tea (born Michelle Tomasik, 1971) is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachuse ...

. It is an

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

novel detailing the narrator's experiences in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

's queer subculture. It includes experimentation with consensual sado-masochism after the author meets Petra, a knife-wielder; as well as Willa, a tormented poet; and Iris, a young butch who escaped from a repressive southern upbringing to San Francisco.

Film adaptation

During 2011, ''Valencia'' was adapted into an arthouse film, with twenty-one different lesbian and queer directors enlisted to film each of the book's twenty-one chapters within a series of short film segments. They include

Cheryl Dunye Cheryl Dunye (; born May 13, 1966) is a Liberian-American film director, producer, screenwriter, editor and actress. Dunye's work often concerns themes of race, sexuality, and gender, particularly issues relating to black lesbians. She is known ...

, Courtney Trouble, trans film maker Amos Mac, documentarian Hilary Goldberg and others. The film premiered at the

Frameline Film Festival The Frameline Film Festival (aka San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival) (formerly San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival; San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival) began as a storefront event in 1976. The first ...

in May 2013."Film Based On Michelle Tea's 'Valencia' Premiering At Frameline"
. '' SFist'', May 9, 2013.

References

2000 American novels 2000s LGBT novels American LGBT novels Lambda Literary Award-winning works Picaresque novels Novels set in San Francisco American novels adapted into films Seal Press books 2000 LGBT-related literary works {{adventure-novel-stub