Yes, I am organizing a Beacon Belching Contest to raise funds for two vital community organizations in Beacon NY, Indivisible 845 and Fareground. The contest is also intended to raise our spirits in this hideous time, and to Keep Beacon Weird.
Adults, children, and teens are welcome to sign up as belchers. And everyone is welcome to attend! All entrance fees of $10 (more if you can, less if you can’t) go to Fareground and Indivisible 845. We will have a distinguished panel of judges rating the belchers.
To sign up, email litlitseries@gmail.com.
Details: Friday, February 27 at 7 PM at the Beahive, 6 Eliza St.
Our deep thanks to the Beahive for donating the space!
Apologies for crossposting, if you’ve seen this already!
I’m very excited that my memoir GROWING UP GOLEM is going to be republished by Indolent Books in an all-new edition, after 13 years. And preorders are available NOW!
The estimable lesbian critic and poet Julie Enszer said of the book, “Minkowitz presents herself as a golem, created and controlled by her wacky, needy, and sexually abusive mother.… The quest of the book is Minkowitz’s transformation from golem to human; she desires, secretly to be a servant no longer for her mother, her sister, or the women she dates. Through their quest, Minkowitz explores her early life with the requisite wry humor that makes the book highly, even compulsively readable.… Emotional complexity, fierce imagination and compelling prose.”
The Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science-fiction author Terry Bisson said of GUG, “Rich and wild, dark and funny, as fearless as her legendary journalism and as scary as a fairy tale. A serious writer at the top of her game. I love this book!”
“In Growing Up Golem,” the late novelist Ellis Avery said, “Donna Minkowitz comes to the unlikely, brilliant conclusion that she must have been her mother’s golem, a manikin formed from clay and garbage and sacred letters… Exciting, startlingly fresh. Donna Minkowitz takes a dazzling leap of fancy and then writes a new bridge into being behind her for the rest of us to follow.”
The book was shortlisted for both a Lambda Literary Award for memoir, and the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Nonfiction Prize.
But I always felt this memoir didn’t get quite enough attention when it came out, so I’m over the moon that Indolent Books is bringing it out again!
If you do me a favor and preorder now, it will help my small-press publisher with publication costs
You can order right now by clicking on this secure link (just $16):
And save the date for my New York City launch event — Thursday, March 12 at the Bureau of General Services — Queer Division at 7:30 PM, 208 W. 13th St. Or for my Hudson Valley launch event, Friday, April 10 at 7 PM the Howland Cultural Center, 477 Main Street in Beacon, NY! Or my event in High Falls, NY at Blue Heron Books, 4 PM on Sunday, April 12.
Happy holidays, everybody! This is a quick note to let you know that my next memoir writing workshop begins Wednesday, January 21 on Zoom. The class goes for eight weeks, until March 11, and meets from 7 to 9 PM ET. Class size is small, limited to 8.
Please let me know if you are interested.
The focus is on craft, particularly on using emotion, sensuality, storytelling, lyricism, and voice. Folks will get frequent feedback in a supportive atmosphere. The fee is $325.
Writers at all levels are welcome. For more information or to register, please contact me at minkowitz46 AT gmail.
A quick bio for me: Donna Minkowitz has taught memoir writing for 27 years, at venues ranging from the 92nd Street Y and the Mt. Chocorua Writing Workshop to the JCC of Manhattan, the New York Writers Workshop, and The Kitchen. Her autobiographical novel DONNAVILLE was published in October. Her most recent memoir, Growing Up Golem, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award, and she won a Lambda Literary Award for her first memoir, Ferocious Romance. A former columnist at The Village Voice, she has also written for Slate, The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, New York magazine, and Salon.
Hey, I’m thrilled to let you know that I’ll be performing a hyper-interactive show, Made/Up, in the very first Newburgh Fringe Festival, Saturday, October 24 at 1 PM! Tickets are $10 (plus $2 facilities fee). Location: The Ritz Theater, 107 Broadway in Newburgh, N.Y.
Made/Up combines writing by me about my life with writing by YOU, the audience. Those of you interested in memoir writing might especially want to come to this!
What stories do we tell about ourselves, and what happens when we want to change those stories? In this highly interactive performance, memoirist-turned-fiction-writer Donna Minkowitz reads selections from all three of her “defiant, playful, dark and funny” books (Kirkus), and invites the audience to come up with on-the-spot micro-memoirs and micro-fiction stories about themselves.
My students (or people who have been my students) are especially invited to come.
This is the show for you if you’ve ever wanted to write about your life and wondered how to go about it. It’s ABSOLUTELY for you if you’ve ever thought about writing a fairy tale about yourself, or imagining yourself as an inanimate object. (The Port Authority Bus Terminal? A poisoned peach? A subway train? The Vietnam War? A vibrator?)
Hey friends, I’m teaching a six-week memoir workshop this summer, on Wednesday nights starting July 16. The last class date is August 20, and we meet from 7 to 9 PM ET on Zoom.
The workshop focuses on craft, especially on using emotion, the senses, lyricism, storytelling, and voice. Students will get frequent feedback in a supportive atmosphere. Class size is limited to 8. The fee is $300.
Let me know if you’re interested! You can contact me at minkowitz46@gmail.com.
Here’s my bio:
Donna Minkowitz has taught memoir writing for 27 years, at venues ranging from the 92nd Street Y and the Mt. Chocorua Writing Workshop to the JCC of Manhattan, the New York Writers Workshop, and The Kitchen. Her most recent memoir, Growing Up Golem, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award, and she won a Lambda Literary Award for her first memoir, Ferocious Romance. A former columnist at The Village Voice, she has also written for Slate, The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, New York magazine, and Salon. Donna earned a BA in Literature from Yale University and received an Andrew D. White Fellowship in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. She founded the Lit Lit literary series in Beacon, and has served as a judge for four book awards. She was recently inducted into the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival LGBTQ Writers Hall of Fame.
Hey, I’m thrilled that I will be one of only two featured readers at the Rainbow Book Fair, the largest LGBTQ literary event in the country!
Come see me read from DONNAVILLE at length and answer your questions on Saturday, May 10 at 3 PM at the LGBTQ Center, 208 W. 13th Street in New York City! The Chills at Will podcast recently called DONNAVILLE “a master class in worldbuilding… deft, with vivid imagination.”
Hi friends. I haven’t updated you here in a long time, and I have lots of news for you!
Of course, this email is being sent out in the midst of a brazen attempt at an authoritarian coup in the United States, which really puts my small bit of writing and publishing news into, as they say, perspective.
Before I get to the latter, JOIN ME IN FIGHTING BACK!
Go to indivisible.org and any demonstrations you can.
Trump, of course, hates oppositional queer writing by women (among others), so maybe this newsletter from me is topical after all!
My novel DONNAVILLE is going like gangbusters. I’m thrilled that I will be one of four featured writers at this year’s Rainbow Book Fair in Manhattan, Saturday, May 10 at the LGBTQ Center, 208 W. 13th Street.
The WROTE podcast did a really fun interview with me about DONNAVILLE, which is up right now. Hosts Vance Bastian and Baz Collins zeroed in on the role of mythology in the book, and asked if its structure had anything to do with Joseph Campbell, which… DING! DING! DING! Yes, it does :-) I love the hero’s journey (which is both less hokey and less sexist than some think), and I love myth even more. The WROTE podcast hosts got it, and I was over the moon.
Meanwhile, I did ANOTHER interview with the Chills at Will podcast, which is “a celebration of the visceral beauty of literature.” I loved host Peter Riehl’s questions, and I can’t wait till that podcast is up.
Watch for a DONNAVILLE reading this summer at Blue Heron Books in High Falls, New York… Also watch for a summer memoir writing workshop from me.
In two weeks, I’m appearing for the first time at the Saints and Sinners Festival in New Orleans, an LGBTQ writing conference I have always wanted to go to. Delighted that I will be on a panel on “nurturing your writing habit” with Michael Cunningham, Jewelle Gomez, Jonathan Alexander, and Joan Larkin, greats all! on Saturday, March 29. I will also be giving a writing workshop Friday, March 28 on writing that straddles memoir and fiction…
Back in New York, I’ll be lecturing on Gnosticism, my favorite religion of all time, at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, Sunday, April 20 from 12:30 PM to 2 PM, 269 4th Avenue. (Don’t worry, I won’t be talking for that whole time, there will be some other things on the program besides me, like music :-) ) Come on down and learn about this radical ancient religion that hated the idea of a jealous, worship-demanding patriarchal god. Some of their medieval adherents thought that, ahem, queer sex was more holy…
DONNAVILLE is now available as an e-book in addition to a paperback. You can get the e-book here and everywhere!
Finally, the next Lit Lit, the monthly open mic for writers I host in Beacon, NY, will be Friday, April 4 from 7 to 9 PM. We are open to all, including non-locals! Check out our new poster by artist Samantha Palmeri. For a fabulous evening with over 20 writers of all genres, come to the Howland Cultural Center, 477 Main Street. If you’d like to read your work (five-minute time limit) get there by 6:30 to sign up.
That’s all I’ve got. Take part in nationwide protests on April 5.
I love you — Donna
Hey, I’m teaching my eight-week memoir writing workshop again, on Wednesday nights starting September 25 on Zoom! The class meets from 7-9 PM ET, and the last class is November 13.
The workshop focuses on craft, especially on using emotion, the senses, lyricism, storytelling, and voice. Students will get frequent feedback in a supportive atmosphere. Class size is limited to 8. The fee is $325.
Let me know if you’re interested! You can contact me at minkowitz46@gmail.com.
Below is some more information about my background:
Donna Minkowitz has taught memoir writing for 24 years, at venues ranging from the 92nd Street Y and the Mt. Chocorua Writing Workshop to the JCC of Manhattan, the New York Writers Workshop, and The Kitchen. Her most recent memoir, Growing Up Golem, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award, and she won a Lambda Literary Award for her first memoir, Ferocious Romance. A former columnist at The Village Voice, she has also written for Slate, The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, New York magazine, and Salon. Donna earned a BA in Literature from Yale University and received an Andrew D. White Fellowship in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. She founded the Lit Lit literary series in Beacon, and has served as a judge for four book awards.
Yes, I am organizing a Beacon Belching Contest to raise funds for two vital community organizations in Beacon NY, Indivisible 845 and Fareground. The contest is also intended to raise our spirits in this hideous time, and to Keep Beacon Weird.
