In Sally Miller Gearhart’s 1978 novel The Wanderground, a group of psychic women known as the Hill Women live their lives completely free of men, communicating with plants and animals and reproducing without sex.

Published by Persephone Press, the book is a classic of the 1970s lesbian separatism movement. It also inspired the name of a lesbian archive located in a discreet office building in Cranston. According to the archive’s website, The Wanderground was one of the first major instances of lesbian representation in science fiction.

The Wanderground emerged from the Women in Print movement, which sought to create spaces in publishing specifically for women. In the 1970s, lesbian women’s writing was rarely published by mainstream book publishers or magazines. Lasting for about 20 years, the Women in Print movement included every aspect of the industry, from authors and editors to printers, bookstores and readers. In New England, Persephone Press operated in Watertown, Massachusetts, until 1983.

The Wanderground archive is run by Mev Miller and her wife, Sally Howard, though Miller is the public-facing half of the organization. Miller was herself part of the Women in Print movement and worked in publishing for decades, amassing a large collection of books and other materials along the way. Much of the Wanderground archive is from Miller’s own collection.

The collection outgrew their home last year, and Wanderground moved into a three-room office that is now filled with books, music and ephemera documenting the lives of 20th-century lesbians.

“Now that we’re settled in the space, we’ll start doing more with the collections,” Howard said.

Wanderground is not a lending library. The books do not circulate but can be studied in the reading room. The archival work is done by volunteers. “To be surrounded by this many lesbian books, their eyes pop out of their heads,” Miller says.

“I’ve never been in a room with this many lesbian books before,” one volunteer told them. Howard points out that a lot of younger people might have never seen a lesbian or feminist bookstore before. 

By the 1980s, there were about 150 feminist bookstores in the United States. Now there are only a handful in New England, the closest of which are All She Wrote in Somerville, Massachusetts and Bloodroot in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

The Wanderground collection is specifically lesbian, though the archive includes some broader LGBTQ anthologies and some feminist publications that include lesbian content, since the Women in Print movement included feminists who are not lesbians. Wanderground mostly focuses on materials between 1950 and 2000, though there are some older items and some newer items, like more recent publications by authors like Judy Grahn who were significant in the 1970s and 1980s. In the reading room, books are organized by publisher.

In addition to books, there are newspapers and periodicals including national lesbian publications with names like Sinister Wisdom, Amazon Quarterly and Lesbian Tide. There is a New Haven-based publication from the 1980s called The Newsletter: A Lesbian Position, and a complete run of Lesbian Connection, which began in 1975. It is one of the few lesbian print publications still going. The archive also includes music, papers, t-shirts, buttons and other ephemera.

Though there are lesbian collections at Brown University and places like Smith College, Miller believes Wanderground is the only wholly lesbian archive in New England. The next nearest is the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn.

Miller’s official title is Instigator/Lesbrarian. In addition to Miller and Howard, there is an advisory council called the Amazon Steward Council. Wanderground is an all-volunteer effort, including librarians and archivists of different generations. “There are older lesbians, and younger people who may or may not identify as lesbians,” Miller says. “I don’t really ask.”

With no paid staff, the organization has low overhead but relies on donors and grants. “There’s rent, the website, insurance and archiving software,” Howard says. “But we’re very frugal. The expenses are manageable.” 

Miller believes that lesbian archives are important because women’s work is often erased from history.

She mentions Sally Miller Gearhart, author of The Wanderground. Gearhart was active in San Francisco politics and worked closely with Harvey Milk to defeat Proposition 6, which would have banned gay and lesbian teachers in public schools. “Then they made a movie about Harvey Milk and Sally isn’t even mentioned.” (Sally!, a documentary about the author, is currently playing film festivals.)

Miller is also interested in building connections, working with other libraries and archives in the region, including the RISD Library, the Sarah Doyle Center for Women and Gender at Brown University and Providence Public Library, where there is currently a Wanderground exhibition. 

Events this year have included a fundraising concert in Newport for Lesbian Visibility Week in April, and a day-long retreat at Camp Hoffman in Kingston to discuss lesbian experiences with Girl Scouting. That event included crafts, camp songs, showing of Girl Scout Memorabilia, and a survey polling attendees about their favorite Girl Scout cookie flavors. (Thin Mints won.)

Wanderground is looking for items that speak to actual lesbian experiences. Items they seek include things like concert posters, jewelry, bumper stickers and mugs. “Maybe it’s a hat from your softball team.” She pauses. “We don’t need all of your books, though.”

“What do lesbians do?” Miller asks. “We cook, we have children, we have lovers, we raise dogs. We want to create a fuller understanding of lesbian history and culture.”

Miller and Howard are both retired, but Wanderground is increasingly becoming full-time work for them. They are both in their late 60s, and their generation is aging. “The folks that we want to get the stuff from are dying,” Howard said. “So we have to get it now.”

Wanderground currently has an exhibition of artifacts on display at Providence Public Library. The exhibition runs through June 30, and on Wednesday, June 25 at 4:30 p.m. Miller will host a Curator Talk. According to the Providence Public Library, “Exploring the Archives: Sharing Stories/Building Connections” is made possible in part through funding support from Rhode Island Humanities, an independent state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The archive is open by appointment only. “We don’t publish the address, with the times being what they are,” said Miller. Contact info@wanderground.org to set up an appointment.