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Elana Dykewomon
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Elana Dykewomon
Elana Dykewomon (née Nachman; October 11, 1949 – August 7, 2022) was an American lesbian activist, author, editor, and teacher. She was a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for the Lesbian Fiction category.
Dykewomon was born Elana Michelle Nachman in Manhattan to middle class Jewish parents; her mother was a researcher and librarian, and her father was a lawyer. She was raised in a Zionist household, and her father fought in Israel's War of Independence. She and her family moved from Long Island, New York to Puerto Rico when she was eight.
Dykewomon had a difficult childhood as she struggled with her sexuality and frequently fought with her parents. She recalled being molested by a worker at the local San Juan hotel. At around 11 or 12, she attempted suicide and was consequently sent to a residential center in New York for treatment then later to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore because of another attempt. In her later teen years, she lived in a halfway house and attended various boarding schools, including Windsor Mountain School.
She studied fine art at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in creative writing from the California Institute of Arts in 1971, and her Master of Fine Arts from San Francisco State University in 1997.
In 1974, Dykewomon published her first novel, Riverfinger Women, under her name of birth, Elana Nachman.
Her second book, They Will Know Me By My Teeth, released in 1976, was published under the name Elana Dykewoman, "at once an expression of her strong commitment to the lesbian community and a way to keep herself 'honest,' since anyone reading the book would know the author was a lesbian." She also considered her name change an attempt to distance herself from the Nachman line of rabbis, and traditional literary culture, noting that "if I called myself Dykewomon, I would never get reviewed in the New York Times".
Fragments From Lesbos, printed in 1981 "for lesbians only," was published under the author's current last name, "Dykewomon," in order "to avoid etymological connection with men."
In the 1989 anthology of writing by Jewish women, The Tribe of Dina, Dykewomon describes herself as "a Lesbian Separatist, descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, typesetter, ...poet".
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Elana Dykewomon
Elana Dykewomon (née Nachman; October 11, 1949 – August 7, 2022) was an American lesbian activist, author, editor, and teacher. She was a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for the Lesbian Fiction category.
Dykewomon was born Elana Michelle Nachman in Manhattan to middle class Jewish parents; her mother was a researcher and librarian, and her father was a lawyer. She was raised in a Zionist household, and her father fought in Israel's War of Independence. She and her family moved from Long Island, New York to Puerto Rico when she was eight.
Dykewomon had a difficult childhood as she struggled with her sexuality and frequently fought with her parents. She recalled being molested by a worker at the local San Juan hotel. At around 11 or 12, she attempted suicide and was consequently sent to a residential center in New York for treatment then later to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore because of another attempt. In her later teen years, she lived in a halfway house and attended various boarding schools, including Windsor Mountain School.
She studied fine art at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in creative writing from the California Institute of Arts in 1971, and her Master of Fine Arts from San Francisco State University in 1997.
In 1974, Dykewomon published her first novel, Riverfinger Women, under her name of birth, Elana Nachman.
Her second book, They Will Know Me By My Teeth, released in 1976, was published under the name Elana Dykewoman, "at once an expression of her strong commitment to the lesbian community and a way to keep herself 'honest,' since anyone reading the book would know the author was a lesbian." She also considered her name change an attempt to distance herself from the Nachman line of rabbis, and traditional literary culture, noting that "if I called myself Dykewomon, I would never get reviewed in the New York Times".
Fragments From Lesbos, printed in 1981 "for lesbians only," was published under the author's current last name, "Dykewomon," in order "to avoid etymological connection with men."
In the 1989 anthology of writing by Jewish women, The Tribe of Dina, Dykewomon describes herself as "a Lesbian Separatist, descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, typesetter, ...poet".