Rebecca Brown (author)

Rebecca Brown is an American lesbian^[1] author whose work has contributed significantly to contemporary gay and lesbian literature.

Biography

Brown is from Seattle, was the first writer in residence at Richard Hugo House, co-founder of the Jack Straw Writers Program^[2] and now serves as the creative director of literature at Centrum in Port Townsend, Washington. Brown's best-known work is her novel The Gifts of the Body, winner of a Lambda Literary Award.^[3][4] Rebecca Brown is also a faculty advisor in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.

Brown’s diverse oeuvre contains collections of essays and short stories, a fictionalized autobiography, a modern bestiary, a memoir in the guise of a medical dictionary, a libretto for a dance opera, a play, and various kinds of fantasy. Brown has "a uniquely recognizable voice, writing as she does in a stark style that combines the minimalism of Ernest Hemingway with some of the incantatory rhythms of Gertrude Stein." ^[5]

Honors and awards

• Winner of the 2003 Washington State Book Award
• The Gifts of the Body, Lambda Literary Award
• Genius Award, Seattle's The Stranger

Major works

• The Evolution of Darkness, (1984) ISBN 0-946189-85-4.
• The Haunted House, (Picador, London, 1986), ISBN 978-0-330-29175-0, reprinted (City Lights, 2007) ISBN 0-87286-460-X
• The Children's Crusade, (Seal Press, 1989), ISBN 1-878067-04-4.
• The Terrible Girls, (City Lights, 1992), ISBN 0-87286-266-6.
• Annie Oakley's Girl, (City Lights, 1993), ISBN 0-87286-279-8.
• The Gifts of the Body, (HarperCollins, 1995), ISBN 0-06-092653-8.
• What Keeps Me Here, (Harpercollins, (1996) ISBN 0-06-017440-4.
• The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary, (City Lights, 1998), ISBN 0-87286-344-1.
• The End of Youth, (City Lights, 2003), ISBN 0-87286-418-9.
• Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary, (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), ISBN 0-299-18970-8.
• The Last Time I Saw You, (City Lights, 2006), ISBN 0-87286-447-2.
• American Romances, (City Lights, 2009) ISBN 978-0-87286-498-6.

References

1. Mudede, Charles (13 October 2005), "Literature: Rebecca Brown", The Stranger (newspaper), retrieved 16 February 2009
2. Stadler, Matthew (1999). "Rebecca Brown: The Byronic Woman". Lambda Book Report 8 (3): 6–8. (subscription required (help)).
3. Brown, Rebecca (25 October 2007). "Two pieces from P-I Writer in Residence Rebecca Brown". Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
4. Brown, Rebecca (25 October 2007). "Two pieces from P-I Writer in Residence Rebecca Brown". Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
5. Xhonneux, Lies. Rebecca Brown: Literary Subversions of Homonormalization. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2014, p. 5

External links

• Interview with Brown and writing samples from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
• Rebecca Brown: Literary Subversions of Homonormalization, which discusses the entire oeuvre of Rebecca Brown
• Brown's articles and reviews for the Seattle newspaper The Stranger