From JustOut, Oregon/Washington online magazine, September 15, 2006

Cate Culpepper: In Search of Amazons and More

For those still mourning the cancellation of Xena: Warrior Princess, there’s hope if you’re a reader. Seattle author Cate Culpepper has penned a trilogy focused on a secret Amazon community struggling to survive in a modern world. The City, a nightmare municipality reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984, includes a top-secret Military Research Unit where political prisoners are tortured under the eye of renowned scientist Caster.

In the first volume, The Clinic, we meet Brenna, hired by Caster to monitor the tortured captives’ health, and rebellious captive Jesstin, believed to be “descended from ancient Amazons.” Caster’s increasingly brutal torture of Jesstin leads Brenna to fear for the Amazon’s life. The two women grow predictably closer, and Brenna learns about Jesstin’s home, Tristaine, an Amazon village whose residents value freedom and passion above political power. Through this and the next two volumes, Battle for Tristaine and Tristaine Rises, Brenna and Jesstin battle more of The City’s minions, traitors and even the phantom of a demon Amazon queen and her ghostly army.

Battle for Tristaine (Bold Strokes Books, 2005; $15.95 softcover) received the 2005 Golden Crown Literary Award in the Sci-Fi Fantasy category from the Golden Crown Literary Society, a coalition of publishers, authors and readers of lesbian fiction. Culpepper was honored to receive the award in Atlanta, though she sees her work as fitting more into an action/adventure genre.

The author cites Xena as inspiration for her Amazon characters. She has also been influenced by lesbian writers such as Jane Rule, early Rita Mae Brown, Katherine V. Forrest, Sarah Dreher and Radclyffe, who is also Bold Strokes’ publisher.

She says she has been encouraged by the lives of Billie Jean King, Eleanor Roosevelt and Maya Angelou, among others. When Culpepper, a native of southern New Mexico, isn’t penning lesbian adventure stories, she is a casework supervisor at a Seattle transitional housing program for queer youth. She shares her home with canine friend and sidekick Kirby, the Warrior Westie.

Culpepper and lesbian author Lee Lynch will read from and sign their books 1 p.m. Sept. 16 at Borders, 708 S.W. Third Ave.

—Patricia L. MacAodha