Judy Grahn is an internationally known poet, writer, and social theorist.
Her work underpins several movements, including Gay, Lesbian, and Queer; Feminist/Woman-Centered; and Women’s Spirituality, but it has spread far beyond any of these.
She currently serves as Associate Core Faculty for the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California, in their Women's Spirituality Master's Program.
She is former director of Women’s Spirituality MA and Creative Inquiry MFA programs at New College of California, from which she resigned in July of 2007.
Judy teaches writing, Metaformic Consciousness (her own philosophy), women’s mythology and ancient literature, and Uncommon Kinship (with Luisah Teish)—a diversity course using testimony, ritual, symbolism, and a Metaformic philosophical approach.
Judy teaches Creative Inquiry and Creative Writing in the Writing, Consciousness, and Creative Inquiry Program at California Institute of Integral Studies. (See Projects Section for details)
Judy does presentations and performs her work, especially with singer/songwriter Anne Carol Mitchell
She collaborates with dancer/choreographer Anne Bluethenthal
She collaborates with Dianne E. Jenett on Serpentina: Women-Centered Research for Everyone, sponsoring events, publications, mentoring groups, and study trips to South India
She holds an earned Ph.D. in Integral Studies with an Emphasis in Women’s Spirituality from California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.
Her work has won awards: an NEA Grant, an American Book Review award, an American Book Award, an American Library Award; a Lifetime Achievement Award (in Lesbian Letters), a Founding Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality Award. Triangle Publishers feature a “Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award”. Seattle Gay Day Parade of (199 was based on Judy’s book, Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds.
She co-edits (with Deborah J. Grenn) and writes for her online journal, Metaformia: A Journal of Menstruation and Culture, viewable at www.Metaformia.org
Rumors and Facts:
It is not true that Judy is sick, or that she has or ever had Multiple Sclerosis, though some WEB sites carry this misinformation. The confusion may be that people are looking for Judy Graham, who writes about MS.
It is not true that she is the author of Woman and Nature—that person is Susan Griffin.
It is not true that Judy is an essentialist or a separatist; her Metaformic philosophy is inclusive
It is not true that Judy was ever anorexic or a drug addict. Her alarming thinness in her thirties was due to overwork, and trying to live on cigarettes, coffee, (if these aren't drugs, what are?) and adrenaline from being a high profile poet while helping to run the Women’s Press Collective in Oakland in the 1970’s. She no longer smokes; she drinks decaf and gets plenty to eat, though chocolate is her vegetable of choice.
What is true:
Judy is a prolific writer: See Book section for a list of her publications.
Judy is a lesbian, and woman-centered.
It is true that she wrote all seven of The Common Woman Poems in one night.
A music group called "High Risk"
recorded one of the poems on a 45, the first distribution of Olivia Records.
She does readings, presentations, and performances (with singer/songwriter Anne Carol)
Her work has been the subject of numerous dissertations and master’s theses, as well as chapters of published books by these authors:
Linda Garber Identity Poetics: Class, Race,
and the Roots of Queer Theory
Kim Whitehead The Feminist Poetry
Movement
Johanna Dehler Fragments of Desire: Sapphic
Fictions in the Work of HD,
Judy Grahn, and Monique Witting
Joe Moffet The Search for Origins
in the Twentieth Century
Long Poem
Judy appears in two films:
Stolen Moments
Last Call at Maude’s
Metaformic Theory is credited in a film using numerous quotes on Judy’s life from her book Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World, in a 60 minute documentary film by the award-winning Kerala, India filmmaker Vipin Vijay: Poomaram or A Flowering Tree (2007).
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Photo used in Judy Grahn web-site header: Lynda Koolish ca. 1972
Header Design and illustration by Shiloh Sophia McCloud www.shilohsophia.com
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