Judy Grahn

Judy Rae Grahn (born July 28, 1940, in Chicago) is an American poet. She has written many lesbian / feminist works.

Activities

Judy Grahn is a poet who writes about women's lives, including lesbian experience. She was a member of the Gay Women's Liberation Group, the first lesbian feminist collective on the west coast, founded around 1969. The collective established A Woman's Place, a bookstore, and The Women's Press Collective, an all-woman publisher.

The Women's Press Collective (WPC) began in Oakland in 1969, with a barrel mimeograph machine, and ultimately was closed in 1978 due to the vandalization of the press and equipment. Diana Press was an offshoot of the WPC. WPC titles included A Woman is Talking to Death, Lesbians Speak Out, and Edward the Dyke.

Grahn is co-director and core faculty of the Women's Spirituality MA program starting at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Palo Alto, California in September 2008 (pending WASC approval.) She is also editor of the online academic journal Metaformia, A Journal of Menstruation and Culture, www.metaformia.org. Her work centers on reclamation of stories, values and methods of Sacred Feminine traditions. Her book, Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World (Beacon Press, 1993) outlines a new origin theory of culture blossoming from women’s peaceful blood rituals, especially menstruation. Her poetry collections include 'The Queen of Wands', 'The Queen of Swords', 'She Who', and 'The Common Woman Poems'. Grahn was recently invited to present her work on Metaformic Consciousness in Chile at Tremonhue, Centro de Espiritualidad y Salud Integral, where she met with women of varied backgrounds and religions from seven countries, who are engaged in remythologizing the feminine in society. In the spring of 2008, she went on tour with Animal Prufrock and Anne Carol, opening for Ani DiFranco in a series of concerts on the West Coast and Canada.

She is the subject of an essay in Adrienne Rich's On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978, 1979.

Some of Grahn's poetry -- including her most recent work -- is now available online and can be downloaded through her website, www.judygrahn.org.

Writing

Poetry:

• Edward the Dyke and Other Poems (1971)
• A Woman is Talking to Death (1974)
• She Who (1977)
• The Queen of Wands (1982)
• The Work of a Common Woman: Collected Poetry (1964-1977) (1984)
• The Queen of Swords (1990)
• love belongs to those who do the feeling (2008)(Winner, Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry)

Other publications include:

• "Ella in a Square Apron, Along Highway 80" (1971)
• Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds (1990, on the history of lesbian and gay culture) (Stonewall Book Award, 1985)
• Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World (1994)
• Highest Apple: Sappho and the Lesbian Poetic Tradition (1985).
• Mundane's World (1988).

Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction

In 1997, Publishing Triangle, an association of lesbians and gay men in publishing, established the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction to recognize the best nonfiction book of the year affecting lesbian lives.

External links

• Grahn, Judy article in glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture
• Modern American Poetry University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign website on Grahn: biographical information, analyses of several poems, excerpts from interviews. Companion to the Anthology of Modern American Poetry.
• Metaformia: A Journal of Menstruation and Culture
• Serpentina website founded by Dianne Jenett and Judy Grahn to support research, projects, and social activism in women's spirituality.