Kristin G. Esterberg, a Cornell alumna and author of Lesbian & Bisexual Identities: Constructing Communities, Constructing Selves, will speak Saturday, Sept. 27, at 4 p.m. in the Founder's Room of Anabel Taylor Hall at Cornell University. Earlier in the day, from 11a.m. to 1 p.m., Esterberg will sign copies of her book in the Campus Store.

Esterberg's appearance, part of Cornell's Homecoming Weekend activities, is sponsored by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Resource Office; Cornell University Gay and Lesbian Alumni/ae Association; the Lesbian, Bisexual and Gay Studies program; the departments of Sociology and of Anthropology; and the Ithaca Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Task Force.

Lesbian & Bisexual Identities (Temple University Press, 1997) examines the stories of lesbian and bisexual women in a Northeast community who share who they are, how they have come to see themselves as lesbian or bisexual and what those identities mean to them. The book reveals how women fall in and out of love, and how they reveal lesbian or bisexual identity through clothing, hairstyle, body language and talk, and many other aspects typically not considered.

The May 1997 issue of Library Journal called Esterberg's book "fascinating" and its portrayal of lesbian identity as "valuable."

Esterberg, who earned a master's degree and doctorate from Cornell in 1988 and 1991, respectively, is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. She has served previously as director of women's studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and as lecturer and teaching assistant in Cornell's departments of Human Development and Family Studies and Sociology. She also served as a research assistant for Cornell Professor Andrea Parrot's acquaintance-rape study.