Tammy Stoner

Tammy Lynne Stoner (born October 26, 1968) is an American writer and artist. She is the co-creator of The Gertrude Conference (launching 2024), the latest iteration of Gertrude, a 25-year-old literary journal, and the author of Sugar Land. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her wife and three children.

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 college, where she met the woman she would marry 20 years later.

Stoner put herself through school 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.

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, HIV+, and Alyson Books until she left to have a baby with her girlfriend.

In 2007, Stoner earned her M.F.A from Antioch University. That same year, Stoner split amicably from her girlfriend. They then moved to Portland, Oregon, 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 write 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 queer film 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, a queer literary and arts journal based in Portland, Oregon, and took over as publisher in 2017. In 2023, the non-profit evolved to become The Gertrude Writing Conference, co-founded with her then-agent from Ladderbird Agency, Beth Marshea.

Stoner also wrote several short films, including being on staff for Second Shot, starring Jill Bennett, who she had also collaborated with in the LA drag king troupe, the Sugar Daddy show (2000–2003), with Stoner as Frankie Roundfirmenhigh.

Stoner's shorter literary writing has appeared in dozens of journals and anthologies. She's been nominated for a Million Writers Award and two Pushcarts. Stoner was an Artist-in-Resident with Sou'Wester and a writing fellow with the VCCA. In 2018, her first novel, Sugar Land, was released by Red Hen Press and went on to win an IPPY Award and be a finalist in the Forewords Book of the Year Award 2018., and short-listed for others, including the Crooks Corner Book Prize.

Sugar Land has been called a "ravishing debut" in a starred Kirkus Review, "writing at its finest" by the New York Journal of Books, and "surprising and exhilarating" by Booklist. Bookpage wrote, "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.

She is now developing "Sugar Land" into a TV series, alongside other film projects. The pilot has been a Finalist in the Portland, Atlanta, New York, Reno-Tahoe, and Seattle International FIlm Festivals, among many others, and was Honorable Mention at the Santa Barbara 2022 Film Festival. The proof-of-concept short film "Nana Dara is Gay" launched at the 2023 American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival.

She's also developing the TV series "Limbo", whose pilot "Dipso Maniac" Won Best Pilot out of 1,000+ scripts submitted to the Portland Screenwriting Awards 2023.