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Judy Grahn

Born: 1940 in Chicago, Illinois
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Grahn was born in Chicago.

Biography: Judy Grahn is an internationally known poet, writer, and social theorist. Her work is associated with several movements, including Gay, Lesbian, and Queer; Feminist/Woman-Centered; and Women's Spirituality. Born in Chicago, Grahn grew up in New Mexico. Seeking options not available in her small-town community of origin, she broke away and joined the Air Force. She was given a “blue discharge” (named for the blue paper on which these letters were printed) from the Air Force because she was a lesbian. This experience galvanized Grahn into public ownership of her lesbianism, into the writing of poetry, into lesbian activism, and into the project of publishing lesbian literature. In 1969, Grahn co-founded the ''Women’s Press Collective'' in Oakland, California. The WPC published the work of Grahn and other lesbians. The WPC edition of Grahn’s book ''Edward the Dyke and Other Poems'' appeared in 1971. Other poetry collections include ''The Common Woman'' (1969), ''A Woman is Talking to Death'' (1974), ''The Queen of Swords'' (1987), and ''Love Belongs to Those Who Do the Feeling'' (2009). Aunt Lute published a collection of Grahn's work in 2009, ''The Judy Grahn Reader''. In addition to her poetry, Grahn has written extensively of what it means to be a lesbian and a lesbian writer in books including ''Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds'', and ''Blood, Bread and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World''. In 1989, she edited ''Really Reading Gertrude Stein.''


Awards:
  • '''''Queen of Wands'''''
  • -- American Book Award '''''The Publishing Triangle'''''
  • -- Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award '''''Really Reading Gertrude Stein'''''
  • -- Lambda Literary Award for Best Book of Lesbian Memoir/Biography, 2013

Primary Literary Genre(s): Non-Fiction; Poetry

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Email: http://www.judygrahn.org/
Judy Grahn on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=judy+grahn


Selected Titles

  A simple revolution :
ISBN: 9781939904065 OCLC: 910966018

Winner of the Independent Publisher Book IPPY Award and an American Book Award! Rooted in a Chicana/Latina/indigenous geographic and cultural sensibility, the stories of flesh to bone take on the force of myth, old and new, giving voice to those who experience the disruption and violence of the borderlands. In these nine tales, Silva metes out a furious justice-a whirling, lyrical energy-that scatters the landscape with bones of transformation, reclamation, and healing.

A simple revolution :
ISBN: 1879960877 OCLC: 783152867

Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco : ©2012.

Another mother tongue :
ISBN: 0807079111 OCLC: 21902105

Beacon Press, Boston : [1990], ©1984.

Blood, bread, and roses :
ISBN: 0807075043 OCLC: 27897859

Beacon Press, Boston : ©1993.

Blood is everywhere in our society: on nightly T.V., in daily newspaper photos, in religious imagery. Yet menstrual blood is never mentioned and almost never seen, except privately by women. A girl's first period is usually kept secret, a source of embarrassment and irritation. Menstruation in our culture is invisible and irrelevant if properly hidden, shameful and unclean if not. It was not always this way. Long ago, in cultures around the world, a girl's menarchal passage was a time of celebration and initiation, and a time for ceremony, often including special clothing and foods and a period of seclusion. Far more than a biological event, menstruation was a recognized mark of female power, a source of ritual and of awe. The influence of early menstrual rites remains visible in our culture today. According to Judy Grahn, the ancient rites explain much of contemporary material culture - why women wear lipstick and eye makeup and adorn themselves with earrings and hair clasps, or why forks, bowls, chairs, rugs, and shoes originated, for instance. But Grahn also reveals the profound connections between ancient menstrual rites and the development of agriculture, mathematics, geometry, writing, calendars, horticulture, architecture, astronomy, cooking, money, and many other realms of knowledge. Blending archaeological data, ethnography, folklore, history, and myth, she constructs a new myth of origin for us all, demonstrating that menstruation is what made us human. Blood, Bread, and Roses reclaims woman's myths and stories, chronicling the ways in which women's actions and the teaching of myth have interacted over the millennia. Grahn argues that culture has been a weaving between the genders, a sharing of wisdom derived from menstruation. Her rich interpretations of ancient menstrual rites give us a new and hopeful story of culture's beginnings based on the integration of body, mind, and spirit found women's traditions. Blood, Bread, and Roses offers all of us a way back to understanding the true meaning of women's menstrual power.

Love belongs to those who do the feeling :
ISBN: 1597091219 OCLC: 236329951

Red Hen Press, Los Angeles, Calif. : ©2008.

A collection of new and selected poems by American poet Judy Grahn, written between 1966 and 2006.

The Judy Grahn reader.
ISBN: 187996080X OCLC: 261176397

Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco : ©2009.

This volume contains work from every phase of Judy Grahn's career, including poems from all of her major poetry collections, such as "The Common Woman," "A Woman is Talking to Death," and the previously unpublished "Mental"; a number of her groundbreaking essays ("Writing from a House of Women" and the newly revised "Ground Zero: The Rise of Lesbian Feminism," among others); as well selected fiction and the full-length play, The Queen of Swords.

The queen of wands :
ISBN: 0895940957 OCLC: 8762718

Crossing Press, Trumansburg, NY : ©1982.

  The work of a common woman :
ISBN: 0895941554 OCLC: 11701429

The Crossing Press, Trumansburg, N.Y. : [1980?], ©1978.

 

 

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