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Current Work
I'm now working on two projects: a collection of stories and a second book of poems. Recently I collaborated with Ash Creek Press on a broadside/folder and a chapbook manuscript envelope.
My most recent book is a collection of poems and monologues called What if your mother (get it from chicorybluepress.com, your local independent bookstore or Amazon.com). Through performance and discussion with audiences, I want to encourage thinking, talking and action for reproductive justice, focusing on a constellation of issues.
I was a member of Chicago’s pre-Roe underground abortion group (often called JANE) for two years, and the recent book put that history to use. The poems and monologues are powerful and evocative; poetry insists upon complication even when it uses the simplest and most familiar words, so is able to engage, explain, and understand the globally and historically insistent facts of motherhood.
As a poet-performer, drawing on years of teaching and talking with women from many races, classes, and ethnic groups in the U.S.A, I visit campuses and community groups; I do fund-raisers for abortion rights plus events for Mothers’ Day, Women’s History Month, National Poetry Month, January’s Roe decision anniversary, and LOTS more. |
Short Bio
I was born in Cleveland, descended from Russian and Polish Jews, mostly socialists and communists who were pretty smart and sometimes good-looking. My hair is now silver and my skin is loosening, draping like thick silk.
I write/perform poetry and prose, and I publish in journals and anthologies. My first two books are considered motherhood classics: Our Mothers’ Daughters, a feminist analysis of the mother/daughter relationship in the U.S. (1979), and Every Mother’s Son, the first feminist analysis of the mother/son relationship in the U.S. (1983). My third book is a literary biography called Grace Paley’s Life Stories (1993). A fourth, which came out in 2005, is What if your mother (see above).
I've taught literature, humanities, writing, and women’s studies in high schools, colleges, libraries, living rooms, a prison, and a jail from 1964 to 2005. I took a Ph.D. in Literature, an M.A. in Women's Studies, an Urban Preceptorship in Preventive Medicine, and a B.A. in English.
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Honors
Grants: Literary Arts, Deming Memorial Fund, Puffin Foundation, Rockefeller Archive Center, doctoral faculty at Union Graduate School
Residencies/Fellowships: Ragdale, Soapstone, Montana Artists Refuge, Mesa Refuge, Wurlitzer Foundation |
Union Affiliations/Professional Organizations
NWU, AWP, PEN-WEST
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Artist Location
Portland, OR
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Type of artist
Writer, Performer, Other
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General Themes
Activism/Social Justice, Education, Health/Medicine, Feminism/Gender Issues, Mass Media/Pop Culture |
Keywords
stories
essays
poems
fiction
movies
performance
readings |
| Last updated on June 10th, 2008 |
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