Two award winning authors of crime fiction–Ann Aptaker and Cheryl Head–discuss their Lesbian protagonists’ relationship to the Law: one choosing to live as an outlaw, the other working within the Law.

Native New Yorker Ann Aptaker‘s Cantor Gold crime series (Bold Strokes Books) has been honored with Lambda and Goldie Awards. The current book in the series, “Flesh and Gold,” examines issues of sex work and sex trafficking in pre-Castro Havana. Aptaker’s short stories have appears in two issues of the “Fedora” anthologies, the online zine “Punk Soul Poet,” and is featured in the November special issue of Switchblade: Stiletto Heeled. In addition to her life as an author, Aptaker has been a curator at museums and galleries and is a professor of Art History at New York Institute of Technology.

Cheryl Head is the award winning author of the Charlie Mack Motown Mysteries (Bywater Books). The first book in the series, “Bury Me When I’m Dead,” was a 2017 Lambda Literary Awards finalist. The current book is “Wake Me When It’s Over,” released in May 2018, with book three, “Catch Me When I’m Falling,” scheduled for March 2019. Her book “Long Way Home: A World War II Novel,” was a 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist in the Historical Fiction, and African-American Literature categories. Head is the Director of Inclusion for the Golden Crown Literary Society. She lives in an historic 1870 rowhouse in Washington, D.C.