Reading Guide: The Epic Life of Eve Adams

Welcome to the first installment of the Dyke Bar* History Reading Guide Series! Today we talk about the incredible Eve Adams. While there were many a sapphic cabaret raging in Paris already, Eve would open the first proto-lesbian bar. But, Eve lived her life in such an epic style, that we must drop some hope into your inbox. You too can feel inspired by Eve to live what I call an Auntie Mame sensibility, e.g. her famed saying:

"Live! Live! Live! Life is a banquet and some poor suckers are starving to death."

So lez live! A recent book by the grandpappy of queer history, Jonathan Ned Katz, offers a deeply researched account of who we know as Eve Adams: The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams (Chicago Review Press, 2021). If you haven’t listened yet or want to relisten, you can check out my two dash part interview with Katz and the fabulous co-producer Julie Enszer, Director of Sinister Wisdom. Links are at the end of this post!

Eve was born Chawa Kotchever in Poland. Her independent migration landed her in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side, right in the middle of the political organizing hotbed (and hotbeds) of New York City. She made her living dirty and radical book peddling, as well as opening her own business. She was famed too for being a "hoboette" who rode the railroads from L.A. and San Francisco to New York City.

Her maverick-level self-fashioning illuminates the contours of queer life across transnational and urban geographies. And, too, the attacks upon her person,her livelihood, and her ability to self-determine her life are emblematic of the anti-feminist, anti-women, anti-trans, and anti-queer policing that began to spiral around the time of her really coming into herself.

Katz traces Adams’s trajectory into anarchist circles with Emma Goldman, the incredible anarchist political theorist and revolutionary organizer, who endorsed "free love," pro-labor, anti-militarization, homosexuality, and abortion. Goldman was a bi/pan dyke too, and she and her work are so potent to queer history that she's worth discussing in future posts.

Tragically, the awfulness of future FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (by the way: not a transvestite after all) deported Goldman, Adams, and so many other important organizers. Regardless, Eve liberated herself from antisemitic Poland and made her way to Paris where she befriended Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, among others. We have no evidence and I would guess that she would not mix with upper crust folks like Natalie Barney and her salon attendees; we also have no evidence she enjoyed the raging sapphic cabarets like Le Monocle.

Once the Nazis invaded France, she and her girlfriend/partner/buddy Hella Olstein hid for years, but were eventually captured and sent to Auschwitz where they were murdered. Now, yes, I promised you living and life. But Eve did! Against all odds and more. In a world of ever rising fascism, Eve feels like someone to keep in our queer minds for how to do that living.

Plus, even in this tragedy, Eve's adventures aren't over. Tomorrow, I'll tell you all about her wee and brief proto-dyke bar.

In the meantime, if there’s anyone who can show us all how to live and keep fighting, it’s Adams and Katz on Adams.

You can listen to two episodes of the dear Katz himself on Our Dyke Histories here:

• Tea, Anarchy, and the First Dyke Bar: Eve’s Hangout 1925 with Jonathan Ned Katz (Part 1 of 2 with Katz)
• Books, Bulldaggers, and the Birth of Lesbian Research with Jonathan Ned Katz & Julie Enszer (Part 2 of 2 with Katz)

To complement the launch of the Our Dyke Histories podcast, co-produced in collaboration with Sinister Wisdom, I put together a reading guide with my interns Michaela Hayes, Mel Whitesell, Paige LeMay, Syd Guntharp, and Sarah Parsons. A shorter version of this post was originally published with the Sinister Wisdom Blog, 3 Jan 2026. This post was expanded by the lead author.