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Judy Grahn is an internationally known poet, author, mythographer, and cultural theorist. Her works include seven books of nonfiction, two book length poems, five poetry collections, a reader, and a novel. An early Gay activist who walked the first picket of the White House for Gay rights in 1965, she later founded Gay Women's Liberation and the Women's Press Collective. Her intention with writing is to replace obsolete philosophies with better ones. Her subjects range from LGBT history and mythology to feminist critiques of current crises, new origin theories of inclusion, what makes us human, taking racism personally in dismantling white supremacy, and stories of how to engage with creature-minds and spirit. She also writes about and teaches poetry of Sumerian goddess Inanna, and has written three books tying her to Helen of Troy, and bringing Inanna's major stories up to date. Judy holds a Ph.D. in Integral Studies/Women's Spirituality, from the California Institute of Integral Studies.
All the poets I know look upon Judy Grahn with admiration and awe, convinced that she's leagues ahead of us, superhuman in her power and insight. But the poet of these chants of grief and frustration-and hope... she has lightning at her command-a magic of writing that illuminates, shreds darkness like confetti, and lets us see past the end of each page, past all our histories, a magic that lets us glimpse a previously unimagined future. -Kevin Killian, author of Impossible Princess What emerges is a new, deeply compelling story, grounded in honesty, humility, and compassion-compassion for herself and for the wonderful, if wounded, people who surround her... striking an artful balance between remembering her past, the past of others, and intervening politically in how we think about history. -Julie Enzer, Lambda Literary Judy Grahn is the direct inheritor of that passion for life in the woman poet, that instinct for true power, not domination, which poets like Barrett Browning, Dickinson, H.D., were asserting in their own very different ways and voices. - Adrienne Rich, from On Lies, Secrets, and Silence People always ask me about my favorite musicians but no one ever asks about my favorite poets. When I was nineteen I discovered the poetry of Judy Grahn, and I was so moved by 'A Woman Is Talking to Death', it's still one of my favorite poems ever, in the world. -Ani DiFranco Judy Grahn has done more to create a women's literature than any other writer in the past half century. - Ron Silliman
