If this little book should see the light after its 100 years of entombment, I would like its readers to know that the author was a lover of her own sex and devoted the best years of her life in striving for the political equality and social and moral elevation of women.

Santana’s journey to embrace her sexuality was life changing for me and many other young women who were struggling to know and love ourselves. We have Naya to thank for that. She knew her own worth and she knew queer women’s worth. She took a throwaway background character and poured spirit and spark into her until Santana was real and revolutionary and so very human. Naya was intentional and generous with her performance. She didn’t have to take up the mantle of queer representation, but she did, and she changed lives by doing so.

I started writing about two girls falling in love because of Santana and Brittany and the online fan fiction community that sprang up around their romance. It was a way to uncover the workings of my heart in a safe and intimate but still revolutionary way. There would be no Her Name in the Sky, no Late to the Party, no She Drives Me Crazy, without those early Brittana fanfics that I wrote from a place of emotional and spiritual starvation.

Sometimes readers tell me that a character I’ve written makes them feel seen. I understand, because Santana made me feel seen. Naya did that. So please know that when you read my novels about young women falling in love, and when you feel seen by them, that it’s only because another brave young woman made me feel seen first. I am gutted by her death and I will be indebted to her forever. I hope the collective gratitude of the queer community reaches high into the heavens and cradles her in love. I will be praying for her family and sweet little boy for the rest of my life.

Those fourth wall breaks give me a little thrill, like we’re conspiratorial lesbians and she wants me to know that I know what she’s up to and I do know and it’s scandalous and audacious and thrilling. Or that Anne sees me, the lesbian in the 21st century, watching her, the lesbian of the 19th century, and it’s like connecting through time, like this is the history we almost lost (like so much other burned private paraphernalia) and that Anne Lister preserved for us, to show us that lesbians existed before the word “lesbian” could be applied to them and that they loved women in all the romantic and sexual ways we want to deny they could have, that Anne Lister loved women, knew how to please them, and women loved her and came back for more.

It works for me. It, weirdly, does make me feel seen. Because I’m guffawing at what’s happening on screen, but it’s like a little wink sent my way like, “Yes, you are seeing this. Yes, I did do this. Yes, it’s great.”