Sandra Cisneros 1954 - Sandra Cisneros was born the third child and only daughter in a family of seven children. She has remarked that growing up, it felt as though she had “seven fathers.” Growing up Mexican and Feminist, she has said, was “almost a contradiction in terms” and that her culture told her if she stepped out of line, she was becoming “anglicized” and “influenced and contaminated by these foreign influences and ideas.” She felt that she was “always straddling two countries…but not belonging to either culture,” which she deals with in much of her writing. Cisneros attended Loyola University of Chicago for her Bachelors degree in English, and then at the University of Iowa where she received a Masters degree in Creative Writing. She has worked as a teacher and counselor to high-school dropouts, an artist-in-the schools where she taught creative writing at every level except first grade and pre-school, a college recruiter, an arts administrator, and as a visiting writer at a number of universities. In 2003, she published a collection of works called Vintage Cisneros. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, and she is the president and founder of the Macondo Foundation, an association of writers working for creativity and community. Cisneros won the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award in 1985 for The House on Mango Street. Caramelo was chosen as a notable book of the year by several journals (including the LA Times, the NY Times, the Seattle Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Tribunal), and was nominated for the Orange Prize in England. Loose Woman won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers’ Award. Woman Hollering Creek won the PEN Center West Award for Best Fiction of 1991, the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, and was selected as a noteworthy book of the year by The New York Times and The American Library Journal, and nominated Best Book of Fiction for 1991 by The Los Angeles Times. She has received many other honors and awards from Universities all over the country. Themes: Race, Family, Feminism, Femininity and Female Sexuality, Poverty, Place, Border Crossing Fiction The House on Mango Street Caramelo Poetry Bad Boys My Wicked Wicked Ways Loose Woman Children’s Books Hairs/Pelitos Short Stories Woman Hollering Creek

Sandra Cisneros

1954 -

Sandra Cisneros was born the third child and only daughter in a family of seven children. She has remarked that growing up, it felt as though she had “seven fathers.” Growing up Mexican and Feminist, she has said, was “almost a contradiction in terms” and that her culture told her if she stepped out of line, she was becoming “anglicized” and “influenced and contaminated by these foreign influences and ideas.” She felt that she was “always straddling two countries…but not belonging to either culture,” which she deals with in much of her writing. Cisneros attended Loyola University of Chicago for her Bachelors degree in English, and then at the University of Iowa where she received a Masters degree in Creative Writing. She has worked as a teacher and counselor to high-school dropouts, an artist-in-the schools where she taught creative writing at every level except first grade and pre-school, a college recruiter, an arts administrator, and as a visiting writer at a number of universities. In 2003, she published a collection of works called Vintage Cisneros. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, and she is the president and founder of the Macondo Foundation, an association of writers working for creativity and community.

Cisneros won the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award in 1985 for The House on Mango Street. Caramelo was chosen as a notable book of the year by several journals (including the LA Times, the NY Times, the Seattle Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Tribunal), and was nominated for the Orange Prize in England. Loose Woman won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers’ Award. Woman Hollering Creek won the PEN Center West Award for Best Fiction of 1991, the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Lannan Foundation Literary Award, and was selected as a noteworthy book of the year by The New York Times and The American Library Journal, and nominated Best Book of Fiction for 1991 by The Los Angeles Times. She has received many other honors and awards from Universities all over the country.

Themes: Race, Family, Feminism, Femininity and Female Sexuality, Poverty, Place, Border Crossing

Fiction

  • The House on Mango Street
  • Caramelo

Poetry

  • Bad Boys
  • My Wicked Wicked Ways
  • Loose Woman

Children’s Books

  • Hairs/Pelitos

Short Stories

  • Woman Hollering Creek

101 Notes

Mary Astell 1666-1731 Author and Social Reformer, she is known as “the first English feminist”. Astell was born and raised in Newcastle, but after the death of her mother and aunt in 1688 Mary moved to London. Her location in Chelsea meant that Astell was fortunate enough to become acquainted with a circle of literary and influential women (including Lady Mary Chudleigh, Elizabeth Thomas, Judith Drake, Elizabeth Elstob, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu), who assisted in the development and publication of her work. She was also in contact with the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, who was known for his charitable works; Sancroft assisted Astell financially and furthermore introduced her to her future publisher. Her most famous work, ”A Serious Proposal to the Ladies”, suggested a scheme for the education and improvement of the female sex. She spent a lot of her time and energy creating and running a charity school for girls. In the early 1690s Astell entered into correspondence with John Norris of Bemerton, after reading Norris’s Practical Discourses, upon several Divine subjects. The letters illuminate Astell’s thoughts on God and theology. Norris thought the letters worthy of publication and had them published with Astell’s consent as Letters Concerning the Love of God. Her name did not appear in the book, but her identity was soon discovered and her rhetorical style was much lauded by contemporaries. Astell died a few months after a mastectomy to remove a cancerous right breast. Themes: Education, War, Marriage, Women, Gender, Politics, Religion, God Nonfiction A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest Letters Concerning the Love of God, between the author of the ‘Proposal to the Ladies’ and Mr John Norris Some Reflections upon Marriage Occasioned by the Duke and Duchess of Mazarine’s Case Moderation Truly Stated: A Review of a Late Pamphlet Entitul’d ‘Moderation a Vertue’ with a Prefatory Discourse to Dr D’Avenant Concerning His Late Essays on Peace and War A Fair Way with the Dissenters and their Patrons An Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil War in This Kingdom The Christian Religion as Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church of England Bart’lemy Fair, or An Enquiry after Wit

Mary Astell

1666-1731

Author and Social Reformer, she is known as “the first English feminist”. Astell was born and raised in Newcastle, but after the death of her mother and aunt in 1688 Mary moved to London. Her location in Chelsea meant that Astell was fortunate enough to become acquainted with a circle of literary and influential women (including Lady Mary Chudleigh, Elizabeth Thomas, Judith Drake, Elizabeth Elstob, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu), who assisted in the development and publication of her work. She was also in contact with the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, who was known for his charitable works; Sancroft assisted Astell financially and furthermore introduced her to her future publisher. Her most famous work, ”A Serious Proposal to the Ladies”, suggested a scheme for the education and improvement of the female sex. She spent a lot of her time and energy creating and running a charity school for girls. In the early 1690s Astell entered into correspondence with John Norris of Bemerton, after reading Norris’s Practical Discourses, upon several Divine subjects. The letters illuminate Astell’s thoughts on God and theology. Norris thought the letters worthy of publication and had them published with Astell’s consent as Letters Concerning the Love of God. Her name did not appear in the book, but her identity was soon discovered and her rhetorical style was much lauded by contemporaries. Astell died a few months after a mastectomy to remove a cancerous right breast.

Themes: Education, War, Marriage, Women, Gender, Politics, Religion, God

Nonfiction

  • A Serious Proposal to the Ladies for the Advancement of their True and Greatest Interest
  • Letters Concerning the Love of God, between the author of the ‘Proposal to the Ladies’ and Mr John Norris
  • Some Reflections upon Marriage Occasioned by the Duke and Duchess of Mazarine’s Case
  • Moderation Truly Stated: A Review of a Late Pamphlet Entitul’d ‘Moderation a Vertue’ with a Prefatory Discourse to Dr D’Avenant Concerning His Late Essays on Peace and War
  • A Fair Way with the Dissenters and their Patrons
  • An Impartial Enquiry into the Causes of Rebellion and Civil War in This Kingdom
  • The Christian Religion as Profess’d by a Daughter of the Church of England
  • Bart’lemy Fair, or An Enquiry after Wit

1 Notes

Audre Lorde 1934-1992 Audre Lorde was born in New York City to Carribean immigrants. She learned to talk while she learned to read, at the age of four, and her mother taught her to write at around the same time. Lorde wrote her first poem when she was in eighth grade. Born Audrey Geraldine Lorde, she chose to drop the “y” from her name while still a child, explaining in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, that she was more interested in the artistic symmetry of the “e”-endings in the two side-by-side names “Audre Lorde” than in spelling her name the way her parents had intended. In 1954, she spent a pivotal year as a student at the National University of Mexico, a period she described as a time of affirmation and renewal: she confirmed her identity on personal and artistic levels as a lesbian and poet. In the 1960’s Lorde was published widely in literary journals and anthologies. Her first volume of poetry, The First Cities (1968), was published by the Poet’s Press and edited by Diane di Prima, a former classmate and friend from Hunter College High School. Dudley Randall, a poet and critic, asserted in his review of the book that Lorde “does not wave a black flag, but her blackness is there, implicit, in the bone.” In 1980, together with Barbara Smith and Cherrie Moraga, she co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first U.S. publisher for women of colour. Lorde was State Poet of New York from 1991 to 1992. She died in 1992 after a 14 struggle with Breast Cancer. Named after Audre Lorde and Michael Callen, the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center is a primary care center in New York City dedicated to providing medical health care to the LGBT population without regard to ability to pay. Another organization, The Audre Lorde Project is a New York-based organization for queer people of color. The organization concentrates on community organizing and radical nonviolent activism around progressive issues within New York City, especially relating to queer and transgender communities, AIDS and HIV activism, pro-immigrant activism, prison reform and organizing among youth of color. Themes: Womanhood, Feminism, Sexuality, Race, Class, Radical Activism, Anti-War, Love, Autobiographical, Lesbian Experience Poetry The First Cities Cables to rage From a Land Where Other People Live New York Head Shop and Museum Coal Between Our Selves The Black Unicorn Our Dead Behind Us The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance Nonfiction Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power Zami: A New Spelling of My Name Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches The Cancer Journals A Burst of Light

Audre Lorde

1934-1992

Audre Lorde was born in New York City to Carribean immigrants. She learned to talk while she learned to read, at the age of four, and her mother taught her to write at around the same time. Lorde wrote her first poem when she was in eighth grade. Born Audrey Geraldine Lorde, she chose to drop the “y” from her name while still a child, explaining in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, that she was more interested in the artistic symmetry of the “e”-endings in the two side-by-side names “Audre Lorde” than in spelling her name the way her parents had intended. In 1954, she spent a pivotal year as a student at the National University of Mexico, a period she described as a time of affirmation and renewal: she confirmed her identity on personal and artistic levels as a lesbian and poet.

In the 1960’s Lorde was published widely in literary journals and anthologies. Her first volume of poetry, The First Cities (1968), was published by the Poet’s Press and edited by Diane di Prima, a former classmate and friend from Hunter College High School. Dudley Randall, a poet and critic, asserted in his review of the book that Lorde “does not wave a black flag, but her blackness is there, implicit, in the bone.” In 1980, together with Barbara Smith and Cherrie Moraga, she co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first U.S. publisher for women of colour. Lorde was State Poet of New York from 1991 to 1992.

She died in 1992 after a 14 struggle with Breast Cancer. Named after Audre Lorde and Michael Callen, the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center is a primary care center in New York City dedicated to providing medical health care to the LGBT population without regard to ability to pay. Another organization, The Audre Lorde Project is a New York-based organization for queer people of color. The organization concentrates on community organizing and radical nonviolent activism around progressive issues within New York City, especially relating to queer and transgender communities, AIDS and HIV activism, pro-immigrant activism, prison reform and organizing among youth of color.

Themes: Womanhood, Feminism, Sexuality, Race, Class, Radical Activism, Anti-War, Love, Autobiographical, Lesbian Experience

Poetry

  • The First Cities
  • Cables to rage
  • From a Land Where Other People Live
  • New York Head Shop and Museum
  • Coal
  • Between Our Selves
  • The Black Unicorn
  • Our Dead Behind Us
  • The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance

Nonfiction

  • Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
  • Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
  • Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
  • The Cancer Journals
  • A Burst of Light

24 Notes

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz 1978 - Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz was born to two government workers, the third, and only non-scientist, of her brood. She attended Central High of Philadelphia, and served as captain of the Academic Decathalon Team, and as managing editor of both the school’s literary journal, The Mirror, and its newspaper, The Centralizer. In 1996, she began her college education at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for Dramatic Writing where classmate and slam poet Beau Sia introduced her to poetry slams. With Beau’s help, Aptowicz founded the NYC-Urbana Reading series two years later at the age of 19. She became the youngest founding slammaster in the country. She worked for a time as the editor for the Adult section for About.com, which inspired her book Hot Teen Slut, and later was a founding employee of the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan. She’s currently a rights agent for the Artists Rights Society, and performs and lectures across the world. In addition to being a poet, she is also a screen-writer (don’t forget, she went to Tisch for Dramatic Writing!), and has three screenplays in her portfolio. Aptowicz has won two Slammaster Slam Championships. She is the three-time Winner of the NYU/Barnes and Noble Monologue Contest, and in 2009 won the Poet in Residence title at the Culver Academies in Culver, Indiana. Her historical non-fiction screenplay, Mütter, won the 2003 Philadelphia Film Festival Grand Prize for Screenwriting and placed in the top 10% in the both 2004 Nicholls Fellowship and 2004 Austin Film Festival Screenplay competitions. Themes: Ex-Boyfriends, Family, Friends, Porn, Science, Like, Love, Childhood Awkwardness Poetry Dear Future Boyfriend Hot Teen Slut Working Class Represent Oh, Terrible Youth Everything is Everything Screenplays Mütter Joob Laurel and Matt Non-Fiction Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz

1978 -

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz was born to two government workers, the third, and only non-scientist, of her brood. She attended Central High of Philadelphia, and served as captain of the Academic Decathalon Team, and as managing editor of both the school’s literary journal, The Mirror, and its newspaper, The Centralizer. In 1996, she began her college education at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for Dramatic Writing where classmate and slam poet Beau Sia introduced her to poetry slams. With Beau’s help, Aptowicz founded the NYC-Urbana Reading series two years later at the age of 19. She became the youngest founding slammaster in the country. She worked for a time as the editor for the Adult section for About.com, which inspired her book Hot Teen Slut, and later was a founding employee of the Bowery Poetry Club in Manhattan. She’s currently a rights agent for the Artists Rights Society, and performs and lectures across the world. In addition to being a poet, she is also a screen-writer (don’t forget, she went to Tisch for Dramatic Writing!), and has three screenplays in her portfolio.

Aptowicz has won two Slammaster Slam Championships. She is the three-time Winner of the NYU/Barnes and Noble Monologue Contest, and in 2009 won the Poet in Residence title at the Culver Academies in Culver, Indiana. Her historical non-fiction screenplay, Mütter, won the 2003 Philadelphia Film Festival Grand Prize for Screenwriting and placed in the top 10% in the both 2004 Nicholls Fellowship and 2004 Austin Film Festival Screenplay competitions.

Themes: Ex-Boyfriends, Family, Friends, Porn, Science, Like, Love, Childhood Awkwardness

Poetry

  • Dear Future Boyfriend
  • Hot Teen Slut
  • Working Class Represent
  • Oh, Terrible Youth
  • Everything is Everything

Screenplays

  • Mütter
  • Joob
  • Laurel and Matt

Non-Fiction

  • Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam

5 Notes

Anaïs Nin 1903 - 1977 Anaïs Nin was born in France as Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell. Nin began to pursue her interest in writing in the 1920s in Paris. Her first published work was a critical evaluation of D. H. Lawrence called D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study. Anaïs Nin is best known for her work as a diarist. Her journals, which span several decades, provide a deeply explorative insight into her personal life and relationships. Nin was acquainted, often quite intimately, with a number of prominent authors, artists, psychoanalysts, and other figures, and wrote of them often, especially Otto Rank. Moreover, as a female author describing a primarily masculine constellation of celebrities, Nin’s journals have acquired importance as a counterbalancing perspective. Her husband Guiler is, on his own wish, all but edited out of her published diaries. In 1973 Anaïs Nin received an honorary doctorate from the Philadelphia College of Art. She was elected to the United States National Institute of Arts and Lettersin 1974. Themes: Life, Friendship, Erotica, Love, Sex, Gender, Art, Family, Incest, Death, Surrealism,  Works D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study Collages Winter of Artifice Under a Glass Bell House of Incest Delta of Venus Little Birds Cities of the Interior (5 volumes) The Diary of Anaïs Nin (7 volumes) The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin (4 volumes) The Novel of the Future In Favor of the Sensitive Man Henry and June Incest: From a Journal of Love Fire Nearer the Moon Aphrodesiac

Anaïs Nin

1903 - 1977

Anaïs Nin was born in France as Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell. Nin began to pursue her interest in writing in the 1920s in Paris. Her first published work was a critical evaluation of D. H. Lawrence called D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study. Anaïs Nin is best known for her work as a diarist. Her journals, which span several decades, provide a deeply explorative insight into her personal life and relationships. Nin was acquainted, often quite intimately, with a number of prominent authors, artists, psychoanalysts, and other figures, and wrote of them often, especially Otto Rank. Moreover, as a female author describing a primarily masculine constellation of celebrities, Nin’s journals have acquired importance as a counterbalancing perspective. Her husband Guiler is, on his own wish, all but edited out of her published diaries.

In 1973 Anaïs Nin received an honorary doctorate from the Philadelphia College of Art. She was elected to the United States National Institute of Arts and Lettersin 1974.

Themes: Life, Friendship, Erotica, Love, Sex, Gender, Art, Family, Incest, Death, Surrealism, 

Works

  • D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study
  • Collages
  • Winter of Artifice
  • Under a Glass Bell
  • House of Incest
  • Delta of Venus
  • Little Birds
  • Cities of the Interior (5 volumes)
  • The Diary of Anaïs Nin (7 volumes)
  • The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin (4 volumes)
  • The Novel of the Future
  • In Favor of the Sensitive Man
  • Henry and June
  • Incest: From a Journal of Love
  • Fire
  • Nearer the Moon
  • Aphrodesiac

39 Notes

Ekaterina Sedia 19??- Ekaterina Sedia was born and raised in Moscow. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and works as a college professor of botany and plant ecology. She has 3 novels to date, and has been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies (please see her website for a complete bibliography). In addition to writing, Sedia was the editor of the World Fantasy Award-winning Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy. She also edited Jigsaw Nation with Edward J. McFadden III. Alchemy of Stone received a star review from Publishers Weekly and was made the LA Times’s 2008 Summer Reading List. Her novel The House of Discarded Dreams will be published later this year. Themes: Steampunk, Free Will, Alchemy, Class Struggle, Religion, Gender, Feminism, Politics, History, Folklore, Fantasy Novels According to Crow The Secret History of Moscow The Alchemy of Stone

Ekaterina Sedia

19??-

Ekaterina Sedia was born and raised in Moscow. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and works as a college professor of botany and plant ecology. She has 3 novels to date, and has been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies (please see her website for a complete bibliography). In addition to writing, Sedia was the editor of the World Fantasy Award-winning Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy. She also edited Jigsaw Nation with Edward J. McFadden III. Alchemy of Stone received a star review from Publishers Weekly and was made the LA Times’s 2008 Summer Reading List. Her novel The House of Discarded Dreams will be published later this year.

Themes: Steampunk, Free Will, Alchemy, Class Struggle, Religion, Gender, Feminism, Politics, History, Folklore, Fantasy

Novels

  • According to Crow
  • The Secret History of Moscow
  • The Alchemy of Stone

3 Notes

Staceyann Chin 1971- A resident of New York City and a Jamaican National, Staceyann Chin is a spoken word poet, performing artist and LGBT rights activist. Chin was the winner of the 1999 Chicago People of Color Slam; first runner- up in the 1999 Outright Poetry Slam; winner of the 1998 Lambda Poetry Slam; a finalist in the 1999 Nuyorican Grand Slam; winner of the 1998 and 2000 Slam This!; and winner of WORD: The First Slam for Television. She has also been featured by cable access programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan as well as many local radio stations. In 1999, Staceyann took the American Amazon Slam title in Aarhus, Denmark. In addition to performing in and co-writing the Tony-nominated Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Chin has appeared in Off-Broadway one-woman shows and at the Nuyororican Poets Cafe. Her memoir was published only a month ago, but already it has garnered a lot of attention. Her collection of poetry and personal essays, Crossfire, will be released this summer. Themes: Love, Sexuality, Jamaica, New York, God, Justice, Humor, Family, Race, Politics  Selected Works Wildcat Woman Stories Surrounding My Coming (chapbook available on her website) Catalogue the Insanity (chapbook available on her website) The Other Side of Paradise

Staceyann Chin

1971-

A resident of New York City and a Jamaican National, Staceyann Chin is a spoken word poet, performing artist and LGBT rights activist. Chin was the winner of the 1999 Chicago People of Color Slam; first runner- up in the 1999 Outright Poetry Slam; winner of the 1998 Lambda Poetry Slam; a finalist in the 1999 Nuyorican Grand Slam; winner of the 1998 and 2000 Slam This!; and winner of WORD: The First Slam for Television. She has also been featured by cable access programs in Brooklyn and Manhattan as well as many local radio stations. In 1999, Staceyann took the American Amazon Slam title in Aarhus, Denmark. In addition to performing in and co-writing the Tony-nominated Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Chin has appeared in Off-Broadway one-woman shows and at the Nuyororican Poets Cafe. Her memoir was published only a month ago, but already it has garnered a lot of attention. Her collection of poetry and personal essays, Crossfire, will be released this summer.

Themes: Love, Sexuality, Jamaica, New York, God, Justice, Humor, Family, Race, Politics 

Selected Works

  • Wildcat Woman
  • Stories Surrounding My Coming (chapbook available on her website)
  • Catalogue the Insanity (chapbook available on her website)
  • The Other Side of Paradise

25 Notes

Monique Wittig 1935-2003 Monique Wittig was a French author, self-professed radical lesbian, and feminist theorist. She was one of the founders of the Women’s Liberation Movement in France, Mouvement de Liberation des Femmes (MLF). She earned her Ph.D from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Wittig was involved with many radical feminist and lesbian groups in Paris in the 1970s. In her books she depicted women, exclusively. She explained this as “a mental space where sex is not determining…this is about building an idea of the neutral which could escape sexuality.” She was an advocate for the abolition of gender categories. In her advocacy of a total rupture with masculine culture, she pulled no punches, forcefully arguing, for example, that lesbians are not women because the word woman is a construction of a broken system: our sexist society. Wittig’s writing style is as unconventional as her philosophy, as she experimented with punctuation and paragraphs. She left Paris in 1976 for the United States where she taught at universities. She worked as a professor in women’s studies and French at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she died of a heart attack. One of her last creations was a film made with Ms. Zeig, ”The Girl,” released in 2001. It received good reviews in the lesbian and gay press, and The New York Post called it ”the steamiest lesbian romp in memory.” Themes: Childhood, Women, Feminism, Politics, Society, Lesbianism, Sexuality, Gender, Utopia, Torture, Hunting, Violence, Sex Novels L’Opoponax Les Geurilleres The Lesbian Body Across the Acheron Non-Fiction The Straight Mind and Other Essays

Monique Wittig

1935-2003

Monique Wittig was a French author, self-professed radical lesbian, and feminist theorist. She was one of the founders of the Women’s Liberation Movement in France, Mouvement de Liberation des Femmes (MLF). She earned her Ph.D from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Wittig was involved with many radical feminist and lesbian groups in Paris in the 1970s. In her books she depicted women, exclusively. She explained this as “a mental space where sex is not determining…this is about building an idea of the neutral which could escape sexuality.” She was an advocate for the abolition of gender categories. In her advocacy of a total rupture with masculine culture, she pulled no punches, forcefully arguing, for example, that lesbians are not women because the word woman is a construction of a broken system: our sexist society. Wittig’s writing style is as unconventional as her philosophy, as she experimented with punctuation and paragraphs. She left Paris in 1976 for the United States where she taught at universities. She worked as a professor in women’s studies and French at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she died of a heart attack. One of her last creations was a film made with Ms. Zeig, ”The Girl,” released in 2001. It received good reviews in the lesbian and gay press, and The New York Post called it ”the steamiest lesbian romp in memory.”


Themes: Childhood, Women, Feminism, Politics, Society, Lesbianism, Sexuality, Gender, Utopia, Torture, Hunting, Violence, Sex


Novels

  • L’Opoponax
  • Les Geurilleres
  • The Lesbian Body
  • Across the Acheron

Non-Fiction

  • The Straight Mind and Other Essays

3 Notes

Kelly Link 1969- Kelly Link was born in Miami, Florida. She writes slipstream or magical realism, a combination of fantasy, horror, science fiction and mystery. Her short stories have won three Nebulas, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. Link lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, co-edit the fantasy half of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror with Ellen Datlow, and run Small Beer Press. In 1996 they started the literary fantasy journal/zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Link has taught creative writing workshops (with a focus on short story writing) at many colleges in the New England area, including Smith College and University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Themes: Pirates, Zombies, Family, Divorce, Disappointment, Love, Friendship, Wizards, Loneliness, Gender, Politics, Hauntings, Ghosts, Magic Short Story Collections 4 Stories: Chapbook Stranger Things Happen Catskin: A Swaddled Zine Magic For Beginners Pretty Monsters: Stories Important Note! Read the stories “The Faery Handbag” and “The Hortlak” (from both Magic and Pretty Monsters) on Link’s website. You can also download the majority of stories from Magic For Beginners free under a Creative Commons license.

Kelly Link

1969-

Kelly Link was born in Miami, Florida. She writes slipstream or magical realism, a combination of fantasy, horror, science fiction and mystery. Her short stories have won three Nebulas, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. Link lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, co-edit the fantasy half of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror with Ellen Datlow, and run Small Beer Press. In 1996 they started the literary fantasy journal/zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Link has taught creative writing workshops (with a focus on short story writing) at many colleges in the New England area, including Smith College and University of Massachusetts at Amherst.


Themes: Pirates, Zombies, Family, Divorce, Disappointment, Love, Friendship, Wizards, Loneliness, Gender, Politics, Hauntings, Ghosts, Magic


Short Story Collections

  • 4 Stories: Chapbook
  • Stranger Things Happen
  • Catskin: A Swaddled Zine
  • Magic For Beginners
  • Pretty Monsters: Stories


Important Note!

Read the stories “The Faery Handbag” and “The Hortlak” (from both Magic and Pretty Monsters) on Link’s website. You can also download the majority of stories from Magic For Beginners free under a Creative Commons license.

1 Notes

Anne Carson 1950- Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics and comparative literature at the University of Michigan. Anne Carson burst onto the international poetry scene in 1987 when she published the long poem “Kinds of Water” in Grand Street. She was an Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany in 2007. Her writing often blends forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation, and dramatic dialogue, making her work difficult to classify. She frequently references and translates mythology in her work. She has received many awards and fellowships in recognition for her work, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” in 2000. Carson has been notably silent about her personal life, and the biographical note in her books consists of one short sentence: “Anne Carson lives in Canada”. Themes: Mythology, Gender, Greece, Love, God, History, Classics, Spirituality, Grief, Family Selected Works Eros the Bittersweet Glass, Irony, and God Short Talks Plainwater Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse Economy of the Unlost: Reading Simonides of Ceos with Paul Celan Men in the Off Hours (won the Griffin Poetry Prize) Electra The Beauty of the Husband (won the T.S. Eliot Prize) If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripedes (translation) An Oresteia (Translation of Agamemnon, Elektra, Orestes)

Anne Carson

1950-

Anne Carson is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator and professor of Classics and comparative literature at the University of Michigan. Anne Carson burst onto the international poetry scene in 1987 when she published the long poem “Kinds of Water” in Grand Street. She was an Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany in 2007. Her writing often blends forms of poetry, essay, prose, criticism, translation, and dramatic dialogue, making her work difficult to classify. She frequently references and translates mythology in her work. She has received many awards and fellowships in recognition for her work, including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” in 2000. Carson has been notably silent about her personal life, and the biographical note in her books consists of one short sentence: “Anne Carson lives in Canada”.

Themes: Mythology, Gender, Greece, Love, God, History, Classics, Spirituality, Grief, Family

Selected Works

  • Eros the Bittersweet
  • Glass, Irony, and God
  • Short Talks
  • Plainwater
  • Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse
  • Economy of the Unlost: Reading Simonides of Ceos with Paul Celan
  • Men in the Off Hours (won the Griffin Poetry Prize)
  • Electra
  • The Beauty of the Husband (won the T.S. Eliot Prize)
  • If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
  • Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera
  • Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripedes (translation)
  • An Oresteia (Translation of Agamemnon, Elektra, Orestes)

10 Notes