Alma Routsong (November 26, 1924 – October 4, 1996) was an American novelist best known for her lesbian fiction, published under the pen name Isabel Miller.

[3] Routsong attended Traverse City Senior High School, where she was on a college preparatory track.

[5] As an adolescent, Routsong read lesbian fiction including Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, and Djuna Barnes' Nightwood.

Both books were mainstream and lacked lesbian content; however, they were autobiographical and captured "her seemingly happy heterosexual married life.

Routsong based this novel on the 1820s relationship between folk painter Mary Ann Willson and Florence Brundage, and as a result, it was her first explicitly lesbian work.

[8] Routsong joined the gay liberation movement in 1970 and was an officer in the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis.

[8] She and Sidney Abbott, Kate Millett, Phyllis Birkby, and Artemis March were among the members of CR One, the first lesbian-feminist consciousness-raising group.

[18] When the pair's relationship became known, Deran was forced to leave her job with the United States Treasury Department.

[10] Routsong developed an interest in spiritualism and enjoyed making astrological charts of the women in her life.