Laurel Ferejohn
Laurel Ferejohn found lesbian feminist community in 1986, with the help of new friends. She had moved to Durham, North Carolina, three years earlier with her husband [who was on faculty at Duke University]. After spending her first 33 years in Los Angeles County, California, she was a grateful “late bloomer.” She came out, divorced, and chose to stay and become a part of the Durham women’s community.
In 1986, Laurel Ferejohn volunteered on The Newsletter, an experience she wrote about for Sinister Wisdom, Spring 2022. A believer in the power of community-oriented periodicals, she continued with that vital underground publication until 1991, when she moved temporarily to the mountains of western North Carolina in the Asheville area. There, she worked with the underground news magazine Community Connection.
From 1989 to 1991, Laurel Ferejohn was a board member of Our Own Place, a lesbian meeting space in Durham, North Carolina, chairing fundraising and publicity for programs and events during its first year or so (Sinister Wisdom, Summer 2018). She also succeeded in securing the space’s 501(c)(3) non-profit status. She volunteered with other organizations as well, such as: Triangle Lesbian and Gay Alliance (TLGA), Senate Vote 90, NARAL Pro-Choice America of North Carolina (now known as Reproductive Rights for All), and the Lesbian and Gay Health Project, where she chose to perform 40 hours of court-ordered community service after her 1988 arrest in a TLGA protest against then-Senator Jesse Helms, a protest that was about AIDS policy.
Laurel’s professional career has focused on editing and publishing, including serving as the manuscript editor for a research unit of her alma mater, the University of California at Irvine. In North Carolina, she was managing editor of a medical journal; associate editor for a medical/scientific journal publisher; publications editor for an academic research organization; director and marketer of a Duke University Continuing Studies program for adults in the community; and senior managing editor for more than thirty academic journals published by Duke University Press.
Laurel Ferejohn has been with her partner, Faith, since 2002. They married in 2013. Laurel left her full-time job in 2010 to write and to become an independent editor. She won the 2012 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize. Her novel (not yet published) was longlisted in 2023 for the Lee Smith Novel Prize from Blair Publisher. She has published short works in the Thomas Wolfe Review, Quiddity International Literary, Southeast Review, Persimmon Tree, Indy, Flash Fiction, and Sinister Wisdom. She occasionally teaches an online flash writing course. The focus of the editorial services that she offers has shifted from scholarly journals to creative work, such as developmental and copyediting of novels and memoirs, work that brings her far more purpose and delight.
See also:
Personal website
Laurel Ferejohn, “Inform, Inspire, Connect: Five Years with The Newsletter,” Sinister Wisdom 124 (Spring 2022): 168-70.
Laurel Ferejohn, “Organizing Our Own Place: Durham, NC,” Sinister Wisdom 109 (Summer 2018): 77-81.