Melody Ivins

Southern Sisters, Inc.: Women in Print, a Feminist Outpost

Melody Ivins (born 1955, died 2023), who did not identify as a lesbian, was nevertheless influenced by lesbian feminism. She was born into a military family. She grew up mostly in the US South, and also in Naples, Italy.

When Melody’s father retired in 1968, the family moved to Smithfield, North Carolina. When she was turning 13, public schools had just integrated. She said, “We were called weird, “Eye-talian” [Italian] Yankees. It was rough.”

Melody Ivins majored in English at the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, earning the highest honors in poetry writing. Before and while managing Southern Sisters, she ran the Women’s Book Exchange, a library of feminist books that moved to several locations in the 1980s, and which closed in 1993.

Melody Ivins worked as a librarian, bookseller, restaurant worker, and more currently, as a historical researcher focusing on Southern African American and women’s history. 

See also:

Long Civil Rights Movement: The Women’s Movement in the South, Interview by Stephanie Rytilahti with Melody Ivins, January 31 2011, for the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.