17 Facts About Judy Grahn

Judy Rae Grahn was born in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois.

Judy Grahn's father was a cook and her mother was a photographer's assistant.

Judy Grahn experienced a fair amount of homophobia during the odd jobs she did to earn money for school, trying to find housing, and was beat up for her butch attire.

At the age of 25, Judy Grahn suffered from Inoculation lymphoreticulosis, or Cat Scratch Fever, which led to her being in a coma.

Judy Grahn then moved to the west coast where she would become active in the feminist poetry movement of the 1970s.

Judy Grahn earned her PhD from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Until 2007, Judy Grahn was the director of the Women's Spirituality and Creative Inquiry programs at the New College of California.

Judy Grahn knew she was a poet by the time she was nine, and had written poetry until she was sixteen when she took a break, but it wasn't until she was twenty-five that she consciously committed herself to her work after overcoming her illness.

Judy Grahn was a member of the Gay Women's Liberation Group, GWLG, the first lesbian-feminist collective on the West Coast, founded in 1969.

Judy Grahn's poetry is at times free verse, and is infused with her feminist lesbian identity.

Judy Grahn's writing is heavily political and focuses on the strength of lesbian culture and critiqued heterosexist biases and the patriarchy.

Judy Grahn's poetry has been used as a source of empowerment and a way to reestablish possession of words and signs of lesbian culture that are often used as derogatory by outsiders.

In 1993, Judy Grahn wrote her second book, Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World which focuses on menstrual rituals as the origin of human civilization by using anthropology, history, archeology, myths, and stories.

Judy Grahn is a chief theorist behind Metaformic Theory, a theory that traces the roots of culture back to ancient menstrual rites.

Judy Grahn plays with language in her poem "The woman in three pieces".

Judy Grahn has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, an American Book Review award, an American Book Award, a Gay Book Award, and a Founding Foremothers of Women's Spirituality Award.

Judy Grahn received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 1994.