News – Page 4 – Donna Minkowitz

February 17, 2014February 20, 2014

Lilith and The Great Chicken Shawarma

I had an emotional experience with some chicken shawarma recently. I’ve never had warm feelings for shawarma before – if you’re curious you can read my piece at Matthew Taub’s lovely new site Local Writeup.

I also had an extraordinarily sweet review this month in Lilith Magazine, which says, “Fierce imagination, fascinating … compulsively readable. Growing Up Golem contains all the power of her earlier work, but it is written without the cloak. Tills new and important ground. Demonstrates Minkowitz’s capacity for personal exposure and vulnerability.” I was thrilled. Thanks, Lilith! If you’re interested, you can read more here.

I was also delighted to get a Kirkus review which said, “Holds nothing back… the same brutal introspection and clever humor [as her first memoir, Ferocious Romance] , but this book is much more personal and sexually explicit … Minkowitz brings a defiant, playful energy to writing about her difficult and dark past. Intelligent but not for the prudish or fainthearted.”

And finally, here are some upcoming readings:

If you’re on Long Island next week, come hear me speak and read from the book at Temple Avodah in Oceanside on the South Shore, Monday, February 24 at 7:30 PM, at 3050 Oceanside Road. More info here.

If you want to find that Ivy League boyfriend or girlfriend, come to the NYC reading I’ll be doing in April with one other author and the filmmaker of “Pier Kids,” sponsored by the Princeton and Yale Gay and Lesbian Alumni Associations! $30 includes Chinese dinner, appetizers, and dessert. Cash bar. Wednesday, April 9, 6:30-9 PM, People Lounge, 163 Allen Street. Reserve here.

I’ll be reading at this cool church called Not So Churchy and doing a short memoir writing workshop at the same time, on Monday, May 5 at 6:30 PM, 85 S. Oxford St. in Brooklyn. They apparently provide chocolate at every worship.

Thrilled that I’ll be speaking at the Sunday platform of the New York Society for Ethical Culture Sunday, June 15 at 11:15 AM. My subject: “On Turning People into Things.”

And for the really big news… drumroll… the first events on the West Coast for Growing Up Golem, will be 1) at Antioch University in LA on May 20 (details TBA), and 2) next October in the San Francisco Bay Area with the LGBT Jewish organization Keshet, the Hormel Center at the San Francisco Public Library, Congregation Sha’ar Zahav and several other groups. Watch this space for info. :-)

August 5, 2013August 16, 2013

Terry Bisson/Ellis Avery

I am so grateful (and blushing like SpongeBob) because I just got my first blurbs. The legendary science fiction author Terry Bisson called my book, “Rich and wild, dark and funny, as fearless as her legendary journalism and as scary as a fairytale.” And the extremely exciting fiction writer Ellis Avery said, “Brilliant… Minkowitz takes a dazzling leap of fancy and then writes a new bridge into being behind her for the rest of us to follow.”

I am SO thankful to both of them.

Here’s a quick update: The final title of the thing is Growing Up Golem: Learning to Survive My Mother, Brooklyn, and Some Really Bad Dates, and it comes out September 21 from Magnus Books.

You can hear a preview at the reading I’ll be part of in New York Thursday, August 22 7:30 at the Lit! series at Dixon Place, where I’ll be reading with four superb writers, Rachel Simon, Melissa Febos, Shelly Oria and the aforementioned Ellis Avery. (161A Chrystie Street, no cover, cash bar.)

May 30, 2013August 16, 2013

Publishing in September!

[POST UPDATED August 17, 2013 : The book title is Growing Up Golem: Learning to Survive My Mother, Brooklyn, and Some Really Bad Dates.]

Hi lovely people who read my blog,

I just wanted to let you know that my new memoir will be published in September by Magnus Books!

I am very excited about this :-) :-)

The book, whose first chapter you can read here, is a magical realist memoir that uses the conceit that my mother created me as a golem, the magical servant-creature out of Jewish legend. (In real life, my mother actually did tell us that she could do magic she had learned from her Romanian Jewish grandparents, and my sisters and I believed her. My mother was an extraordinarily– at times revoltingly — creative person, so it was no great stretch to believe she had made me by hand like a golem or a living toy.)

In the book, I try to pass for human, becoming a golem who does queer activist reporting for the Village Voice, etc., trying to have relationships with real human women, but I remain, inescapably, an obviously fake imitation of a person programmed to obey commands, not have feelings or take pleasure. Matters come to a head when I turn 36 and all the false trappings of my life – career, friendships, fake sex life, even my body – suddenly flare into crisis.

So what, you’re probably wondering, is the title?

IT IS STILL UP IN THE AIR!

I feel like Bilbo Baggins In Lord of the Rings, feverishly writing and crossing out MY DIARY. MY UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. THERE AND BACK AGAIN. AND WHAT HAPPENS AFTER. ADVENTURES OF FIVE HOBBITS. THE TALE OF THE GREAT RING, COMPILED BY BILBO BAGGINS FROM HIS OWN OBSERVATIONS AND THE ACCOUNTS OF HIS FRIENDS. WHAT WE DID IN THE WAR OF THE RING.

What am I going to call this mashup of memoir and myth?

Stay tooned!

If you want me to keep you posted on further developments, just write “keep me posted” in the comments section!

Category: News

Lilith and The Great Chicken Shawarma

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Terry Bisson/Ellis Avery

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Publishing in September!

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