Tag: Memoir

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Growing Up Golem Is Being Republished!

The Ghost of a Flea c.1819-20 William Blake

Hi everyone.

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):

https://buy.stripe.com/4gMbJ22qdcrV65GgvK6kg18

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.

Thank you so much —

Donna

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Next memoir workshop starts January 21

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.

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Made/Up at the Newburgh Fringe Festival!


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?)

For tickets, click here:

https://secure.qgiv.com/for/newburghfringefestival/event/madeup/

(You can also get tix with $12 cash at the door.) Would love to see you there!
Donna

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Summer Memoir Workshop!

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.

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September 25 Memoir Writing Workshop on Zoom!

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.

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What’s New for January

Hey campers, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

We got a lot going on in January here In Donnaville:

  • On Thursday evening, January 12, I will teach A FREE MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP at the Howland Public Library, 313 Main Street in Beacon, 6 PM- 7:15 PM. Please register here.
  • My next 8-week memoir workshop starts Wednesday, January 25 at 7 PM. It goes for eight Wednesday nights, from 7-9 PM, and the cost is $325. See here for more info.
  • The next LIT LIT is Friday, January 20 at the Howland Cultural Center at 7 PM, 477 Main St. in Beacon. If you’re interested, come on down! Some reading slots will be available at the door, or just come and listen 😎
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Donnaville: Work in Progress

Hey there! I thought I would describe to you what I’ve been working on since late fall of 2019. It’s a new book called DONNAVILLE, and it takes place in a city that is, yes… the city of my mind. You know how the poet Delmore Schwartz once wrote, “The mind is a city like London/Smoky and populous: it is a capital/Like Rome, ruined and eternal,/Marked by the monuments which no one/Now remembers”? This book imagines that city, er, my city — the little citystate of my mind.

You know how Sylvia Plath once wrote, “Is there no way out of the mind?” (Look it up, it’s a terrifying poem.) Well, sometimes Donnaville feels a little bit like that, because its central location is a prison, and one of the two main characters is the Jailer, who is also a janitor and torturer.

You know how Denise Levertov once wrote to a lover, “You invaded my country by accident/not knowing you had crossed the border./Vines that grew there touched you”? And then she tells him, “I invaded your country with all my/’passionate intensity,’/pontoons and parachutes of my blindness./But living now in the suburbs of the capital/incognito, my will to take the heart/ of the city has dwindled. I love its unsuspecting life,/its adolescents who come to tell me their dreams in the dusty park…”? Well, Donnaville is also about that, what happens when people approach the “countries” of other people’s minds, and try to have relationships with them. When different countries (or citystates), in other words, try to get together.

So, I have finished preliminary edits. It will be a long while before this book is out, but if you want to read some short excerpts, you can read them here, here, here , here, and here. Hope you like! :-)

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Vote For Me!


Edited on April 20: oh my God, I’m a finalist! Truly did not expect that. If you want to, please vote for me to advance further. For this readers’ choice award, people actually get to vote once a day!

Okay… For the very first time in my life, I get to say, “Vote for me!”

I’m thrilled to have been nominated for Chronogram Magazine’s annual award for the best author in the Hudson Valley :-) This is a readers’ choice award, and finalists and the winner are determined by whoever gets the highest number of votes. It’s the absolute truth to say I would be honored if I got yours.

Just to refresh you, I am the author of two award-winning and critically acclaimed memoirs. I am the founder of the Lit Lit series in the Hudson Valley, the winner of a GLAAD Media Award and Radcliffe College’s Exceptional Merit Media Award, and a writer who has gone undercover to write about white nationalists and the Christian right.

Everyone is allowed to vote, whether you live in the Hudson Valley or not.

You can vote for me at this link. (Please just scroll down slightly from the Artist category where this page begins, to the Author category where I am.) Many thanks, and if I win, I’m giving out pie!