Beth Gundersen
- Interviewed December 7, 2015
Beth Gundersen grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. She started college at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She married at nineteen and moved with her husband and one son to Fairbanks, Alaska. In Alaska, she had another son, got divorced, and came out as a lesbian at age twenty-seven in 1983.
When Beth Gundersen moved back to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1984, she already knew about Lodestar Books, the feminist bookstore. She began volunteering there in 1984. She became co-owner of the store in 1987, and she managed it with Sally Engler until they sold it in 1997. During those bookstore years, she completed her college degree at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1987.
She also trained in massage therapy, although she never expected to turn out to be a massage therapist. However, after selling the store, she began building a massage practice. She has continued practice as a massage therapist ever since.
In 2008, in San Francisco, one of the few places where it was legal for women to marry each other, Beth Gundersen married her partner, Leslie Smukler.
See also:
Rose Norman, â âYou had to be passionate and crazyâ: Feminist Booksellers in the South,â Sinister Wisdom 116 (Spring 2020): 14-38.