On a Grey Thread

Elsa Gidlow (1898-1986) was a Canadian American poet, journalist, and philosopher. Born in Yorkshire, England, Gidlow moved with her family to Canada in 1905, settling in Montreal. At seventeen, she began pursuing amateur journalism full time, working with Roswell George Mills to publish Les Mouche fantastique, a pioneering magazine that was the first in North America dedicated to gay and lesbian content. Gidlow left for New York at 21, finding work as a poetry editor of Pearson’s and befriending influential poet Kenneth Rexroth, whom she would follow to San Francisco in 1926. A lesbian and anarchist, Gidlow was involved in some of California’s most influential radical political and artistic circles, befriending Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Robert Duncan, Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg, and Maya Angelou throughout her life. At her ranch Druid Heights, purchased in 1954 and shared with her partner Isabel Grenfell Quallo and carpenter Roger Somers, she established a bohemian community that was home to such figures as Alan Watts, Gary Snyder, and Catherine MacKinnon. Persecuted by the United States government’s House Un-American Activities Committee for her beliefs, Gidlow was a tireless artist and activist whose autobiographical works, philosophical texts on lesbianism, and poetry collections—including her debut On a Grey Thread (1923)—remain essential, groundbreaking works of queer literature.