The Violet Quill (or the Violet Quill Club) was a group of seven gay male writers that met in 1980 and 1981[1] in New York City to read from their writings to each other and to critique them.
[2] This group and the writers epitomize the years between the Stonewall Riots and the beginning of the AIDS pandemic.
[3][4] What made this group important was that several of its members became some of the most important Post-Stonewall gay writers in America, and the group includes writers and works that have been linked to gay writing as a literary movement.
[3][4] Felice Picano recalls that the group started because straight editors, agents, and fellow writers weren't being helpful with advice on gay themed writing.
The first two were primarily or ostensibly for straight audiences where the gay characters are either minor to the main theme, or in which they live tragic lives and then died.