Tammy Lynne Stoner is a genre blending, American writer and artist. She created the first children's program for kids in gay families, "Dottie's Magic Pockets". She is the publisher of Gertrude Press and GERTIE, and is the author of Sugar Land She lives in Portland, OR with her wife and three kids.
Personal life
Stoner was born in Midland, Texas and lived in El Paso, Texas and Gulfport, Mississippi before her family settled in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. After attending twelve years of Catholic school, she left for West Chester University, where she met the woman she would marry 20 years later. Stoner put herself through college at Temple University by working as an artists’ model, a paid medical experimentee, a waitress at a Greek diner, a house cleaner, a biscuit maker, and a book store manager. While in Philadelphia, she started Shrink-Wrap literary and art journal with her boyfriend, was published several times, and played in a band who practiced secretly at the Mummers Museum. After graduation, she moved from Philadelphia to Austin, Texas where she worked as a gas station attendant and in print production. In 1995, Stoner moved to South Korea. She taught English in Busan for a year before resettling in the Tenderloin in San Francisco in 1996. The following year she moved to Southern California where she lived for ten years, working as a print production manager at Liberation Publications, parent company of The Advocate, Out magazine, HIV+, and Alyson Books until she left to have a baby with her girlfriend. Her pregnancy led to the final break with her religious parents. In 2007, Stoner earned her MFA from Antioch University. That same year, Stoner split amicably from her girlfriend. They then moved to Portland, OR with their son. In 2008, Stoner reunited with her college girlfriend, Karena Meehan, who was living in Paris. Meehan moved to Portland to be with Stoner. Three years later they were married, and had twin girls in 2014.
Creative work
In 2006, Stoner's son asked her why no families on kids' TV had two mommies, inspiring Stoner to create "Dottie's Magic Pockets". Dottie was directed by her friend from Sony Pictures, Andrea Maxwell, and stars Jennifer Plante. It was released in 2007 to much media buzz and played at numerous gay and lesbianfilm festivals including London, Melbourne, Toronto, Outfest, and Frameline. Now, Dottie is in 100+ libraries in the United States and Canada. From 2011-2014, Stoner was the Fiction Editor for Gertrude Journal, based in Portland, OR, a queer literary and arts journal, and took over as Publisher in 2017. Shortly after, she launched GERTIE. Stoner also wrote several produced short films and in 2013, she was on the writing staff for "Second Shot", starring Jill Bennett. Stoner's shorter literary writing has appeared in two dozen journals and anthologies. She's been nominated for a Million Writers Award and a Pushcart. In 2012 she was offered a fellowship to the Summer Literary Seminar in Kenya. She was an Artist-in-Resident with Sou'Wester and a writing fellow with VCCA. In 2018, her first novel, Sugar Land, was released by Red Hen Press and went on to win an IPPY and be a finalist in the Forewords Book of the Year Award 2018. Sugar Land has been called a "ravishing debut" in a starred Kirkus Review, "writing at its finest" by the NY Journal of Books, and "surprising and exhilarating" by Booklist. Bookpage called it "a novel of exploration, bravery and redemption, with keen insight into race, class, gender identity and social norms, Sugar Land is the story of a woman learning to come home to herself." In 2019, Stoner appeared on an episode of Storytellers Telling Stories, reading an excerpt from Sugar Land, accompanied by Americana duo Pretty Gritty.
