Lesbian Herstory Archives AudioVisual Collections

Judy Grahn audio recordings, circa 1970s

Title

Judy Grahn audio recordings, circa 1970s

Description

Judy Grahn is a poet, activist, and scholar who has published 14 books to date and is widely recognized for writing that engages with queer, feminist themes.

At the age 21, Grahn was discharged from the Air Force for being openly gay, a source of great shame and anger that contributed to her radicalization. She went on to write and publish her own poetry and became a founding member of the West Coast New Feminist Movement. Grahn was a member of the Gay Women’s Liberation Group and, in 1969, a co-founder of the Women's Press Collective–a collective of women devoted to publishing works by female authors and raising the voices of disenfranchised lesbians. Through the collective, Grahn published and circulated her earliest books of poetry including Edward the Dyke and Other Poems (1971) and She Who (1972). Her later works include non-fiction, such as her autobiography entitled A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poetry (2012).

Grahn's poetry is heavily influenced by feminist mythology and Metaformic Theory which links modern culture to ancient menstruation rites. She is a leading theorist and scholar of feminist mythology and teaches at California Institute of Integral Studies.

Grahn has received a number of awards for her poetry including a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Lambda Literary Awards, American Book Award, a Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality Award, and a Stonewall Award. Since 1997, Publishing Triangle has annually awarded the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Non-Fiction to an outstanding work in her honor. Judy Grahn has been a past Grand Marshall of both the San Francisco and Seattle Pride Parades. She continues to dedicate her life to queer activism, cultural studies, and writing poetry.

Rights

This link will take you to a description of the rights issues related to this collection and the Women's Press Collective collection. While only an excerpt of a reading by Grahn is available here, more material is held by the archive. For more information, contact the Lesbian Herstory Archives

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