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  "description": "On the latest episode of Still Here, Leslie Clarke speaks with Dr D-M Withers of Lurid Editions and Dr Christopher A. Adams about the republication of Mariana Villa-Gilbert’s A Jingle Jangle Song: a rediscovered queer novel from 1968 and a friendship formed through snail mail.",
  "path": "/weve-always-been-here-how-a-lost-1960s-queer-novel-found-its-way-back/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-17T08:30:37.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.scenemag.co.uk",
  "tags": [
    "Subscribe now"
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  "textContent": "_The full episode drops on Friday 20 March 2026. Listen wherever you get your podcasts._\n\nThere’s something quietly radical about dialling a number from the phone book. That’s how Dr Christopher A. Adams first made contact with Mariana Villa-Gilbert, a queer author who had published six novels in the 1960s and 70s, gained a cult following in the lesbian press, and then, gradually, slipped out of print, out of libraries, and out of view.\n\nDr Christopher Adams | 📸 Joanne Williams\n\nAdams, a playwright and scholar, was deep in his PhD research on post-war queer publishing history when he realised he couldn’t find a record of Villa-Gilbert’s death. He looked her up. Found a listing in Cornwall. Picked up the phone.\n\n_“I mostly try to avoid making phone calls,”_ he admits, with a laugh. But he made this one. Villa-Gilbert answered. And so began an unlikely correspondence: typewritten letters sent back and forth, a millennial printing and posting replies, an elderly writer who had no interest in the internet but had, it turned out, never stopped writing.\n\n### This post is for subscribers only\n\nBecome a member to get access to all content\n\nSubscribe now",
  "title": "“We’ve always been here”: How a lost 1960s queer novel found its way back",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-17T08:30:38.407Z"
}