[2] Though there are notable examples of both men and women expressing interest in both genders romantically and sexually in early literary works, the recent catalyst of gay rights movements inspired a surge of more LGBT literature.
Though most of these literary works focused on lesbian and gay relationships, bisexuality is slowly making a rise and becoming more visible in literature and individuals.
Sometime after the publication of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Wilde was summoned to court on accusations of gross indecency for his portrayal of homosexual overtones and rumors about his own gay relationships.
Kate Chopin's The Awakening portrays Edna Pontellier, who is shown to be "capable of responding physically to a woman and of loving women" despite having numerous sexual relationships with men.
Though her main character's sexuality is never explicitly stated, Chopin knew or read about homosexuality and bisexuality in the works of authors such as American poet Walt Whitman or French story writer Guy de Maupassant, and this likely influenced her character's sexual ambiguity.
[5] The 1900s saw an increase in bisexual literature, although not by much, as many authors followed the trend of addressing radical and controversial topics in their writing.
In 1976, the first of Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles was published, and the series portrayed several main characters as bisexual or biromantic.
[10] One of the reasons mainstream media had this misconception is novels and literature rarely identified bisexuality even while portraying it.
Towards the end of the decade, the mainstream press released some stories concerning the "AIDS threat bisexuals posed to heterosexuals.
BiNet USA led a campaign after multiple bisexual works of literature were forced to compete in the lesbian categories of the Lambda Literary Awards.
[13] In 1995, Harvard University Shakespeare professor Marjorie Garber argued the academic case most people would be bisexual if not for "repression, religion, repugnance, denial, laziness, shyness, lack of opportunity, premature specialization, a failure of imagination, or a life already full to the brim with erotic experiences, albeit with only one person, or only one gender" with her book Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life.
[21] In 2014, Bisexuality: Making the Invisible Visible in Faith Communities by Marie Alford-Harkey and Debra W. Haffner, the first book of its kind, was published.
With a network of highly talented editors, artists, and writers, LT3 is dedicated to providing quality fiction that put substance first.
[28] Lethe Press is an independent publishing house specializing in speculative fiction and books of queer interest.
[18] Over the past 30 years, the number of books written in English for children and young people that portray lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise queer (LGBT) characters has increased exponentially.
In more recent years, LGBT characters have increasingly been included in books for older children and young adults.
[32] Most nonfiction works portraying historical people who had relationships with members of more than one gender tend to omit those elements of those characters' biographies.
In Nancy Garden's The Year They Burned the Books, bisexuality is essentially shown as a temporary state of confusion, with both characters unsure of their sexuality and not seeing it as a possibility.