Women of Cubbyhole A to Z

The "Women of Cubbyhole A to Z" started with pockets full of notes written on napkins, escapades, and chance encounters at lesbian bar in New York City's Greenwich Village. While this project could be seen as a tribute to the bar, Cubbyhole is merely the setting for this collection of stories, designed as a salute to Lesbian Pulp Fiction titles, presented as an A to Z series of book covers. That said, "Women of Cubbyhole A to Z" is not a self-help dating book. Nor is it intended to recount a series of pickup lines that do or don't work. Although the book is dedicated to the bar's founder, Tanya Saunders, Ms. Gilbert believes the book has a broader appeal to anyone dating, meeting people in any kind of bar, and experiencing the mishaps of regulars, visitors, and staff.

"They" always say to write what you know, which is often what she did on her way home or the next morning. She would often find wads of cocktail napkins with text/story fragments on her bedside table. But instead of "fleshing" out the stories into actual books or short stories, the author/designer visualized the covers of a collection of sometimes raw, frequently funny experiences, pages from her journal, and other ephemera. Unlike the earlier pulp fiction authors, who had no control over cover design or copy—or even how the stories ended—Ms. Gilbert took over all aspects of these titles (cover design, back copy text, bar codes, marketing quotes, copy editing). While the cover stories are offered alphabetically, none of them took place in such an ordered, chronological way. Like scrabble tiles, they were collected randomly and then pieced together, in an effort to make sense of life, romance, wishful thinking, dashed hopes.

Please join Ms. Gilbert, her unnamed protagonist, and her alter-author Anon E. Mess, as they alphabetize their way through the ups and downs of being a heart-on-her-sleeve, sometimes tongue-tied, always dapper-tied, romantic raconteur.

A born and bred Midwesterner from Lakewood, OH, Ms. Gilbert has been a New York City resident since 1981. As a regular at the bar known to volunteer as barback and bouncer, the author/designer collected quite a few dating stories, survived several of her own mishaps, and met other women with their own stories. Too shy to perform a standup act in public, she decided to collect the anecdotes into an illustrated coffee table/comic book.

This is her first self-published book, although she collaborated with a friend on a limited edition, illustrated, and handmade chapbook of poems about 9/11, Stories from the Ruins, which is in collections of both the Detroit Institute of the Arts and NYC's Museum of Modern Art.