Kelly Cogswell helped found the Lesbian Avengers activist group in the 1990s in New York City, growing its membership to over 20,000 supporters. Through creative protests and touring her experiences over 20 years of activism, Cogswell actively advocated for lesbian rights and challenged opposition to the lesbian community. Her memoir "Eating Fire: My Life As A Lesbian Avenger" recounts her journey from small-town Kentucky to becoming a pioneering lesbian activist on the gritty streets of New York, utilizing confrontational but intelligent tactics to push for equality.

1. Spitfire Frontier Lesbians
The 90s weren’t exactly what history would call a revolutionary decade, but for Kelly
Cogswell and her newfound band of Lesbian Avengers, she damn-near claimed that title
as her own. Straight out of Kentucky and into the bustling streets of New York, this artist
harnessed her creative passion for the greater good. By helping her fellow Sapphic
sisters band together, Cogswell became 20,000 supporters strong at the height of her
contribution, and took every opportunity to be seen in the public eye.
Blending the hype of first-time experiences, creative protesting techniques, and her band
of friends and lovers, Cogswell’s journey is entertainingly played by her left-brained ear.
While touring twenty years’ worth of dedication to the cause with hardly a lull to be
heard and plenty of perception-bending art, this author actively questions the finesse of
opposition, the right to community and the unending journey of identity. Witty and
blunt, right down to her confrontations with police officers and public objectors,
Cogswell takes a stern, yet tasteful and intelligent take on her perception of this portion
of history in the Civil Rights Movement for lesbians. This memoir is more than a
recollection of rebellious events as it rushes straight past a symbolic gesture of
adulthood and ushers our young writer from her small-town naivety and tosses her onto
the gritty, stone-cold streets. In spite of her scrapes and bruises, it is here that she finds
the courage to line up with her fellow sisters and demonstrate their strength as a final-
frontier lesbian, utilizing her pioneering mind in ways such as eating fire, just as the title
foreshadows.
Eating Fire: My Life As A Lesbian Avenger
by Kelly Cogswell
Softcover, $19.95, 9 x 6 in., 237 pp
ISBN 978-0-8166-9116-6
2014 University of Minnesota Press,
111 3rd Ave S # 290, Minneapolis, MN 55401
Release date: February 2014
Distributed Partner
Contact: Jessica Pisciotta (636) 724-5271
whosthatgirl_itsjess@icloud.com

2. Packed with discovery, laughs, and plenty of sentiment, Eating Fire: My Life As A
Lesbian Avenger is not simply a memoir of finding peace and acceptance of community,
orientation, and love, but rather it goes beyond to reveal what women are willing to do
for equality with the sweat and grace of a reputable influence in the activist scene.
Author Kelly Cogswell is an artist, poet, musician, and more. When she’s not
documenting lesbian activism, she is writing as an independent blogger for New York’s
Gay City News.