Background

Diane Lefer was born on November 11, 1950, in New York, New York, United States. She is the daughter of Henry and Sylvia Lefer.

Education

From 1968 to 1970 Diane Lefer attended Radcliffe College (later Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study). She dropped out of college and moved to Oaxaca, Mexico.

Career

In 1987 Diane Lefer became a member of faculty in the Master of Fine Arts Writing Program at Vermont College, Montpelier and taught for twenty-three years. From 2000 to 2001 she was a fiction mentor for creative writing program at Antioch University Los Angeles. From 2000 to 2003 Lefer served as a co-founder and co-artistic director of Triumvirate Pi Theatre Company.

Her stories have been widely published and anthologized and her books of fiction including California Transit (2007), Radiant Hunger (2001), Very Much Like Desire (2000), and Nobody Wakes Up Pretty (2012) often address social issues. The Fiery Alphabet, published in 2013 by Loose Leaves Publishing, was a Small Press Pick. Confessions of a Carnivore (2015) draws on her work with the Los Angeles Zoo.

Diane collaborated with Colombian exile Hector Aristizábal on Nightwind (2004), a play that has toured the world about his arrest and torture by the United States-trained military. Her play, Penalty Phase, was used as a fundraiser for the JusticeWorks campaign, Mothers in Prison/Children in Crisis.

She is also the author of plays American Buggery (2001), Tell Me Which Way a Hanged Man's Feet Will Hang (2001), Fix (2002), Interrogating the Power of Art (2004), Harvest (2005), In the Forest de/Lirios (with Hector Aristizábal, 2005), Majikan (2007), Star Jasmine (2007), Brave New Tiger, Darwinville, The Parting Glass, Power Grab, The Still Point, Sweet City, Tangerine Quandary, and Woman with a Hobby, etc.

Achievements

• Diane Lefer is best known as the author of The Circles I Move In and Radiant Hunger. In 2001 her book Radiant Hunger was named by PEN USA as one of the ten best fiction books of the year by authors west of the Mississippi. Her works received high praise from critics.

Works

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  • The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism, and Transformation

    (Hector Aristizábal grew up in the barrios of Medellin, Co...)

    2010
  • The Fiery Alphabet

    (Daniela Messo and her father withdraw themselves from the...)

    2013
  • Confessions of a Carnivore

    (After Rae's ear is shot off by a jittery security guard a...)

    2015
  • The Circles I Move In

    (These sharp-edged, uncompromising, often comic stories ta...)

    1994
  • Radiant Hunger

    (Two households on a back road: a devastated family and an...)

    2001
  • Very Much Like Desire

    (Diane Lefer's stories are pure, and purely wonderful, sur...)

    2000
  • Nobody Wakes Up Pretty

    (New York City, 1992. For Holly, it's the summer when the ...)

    2012
  • Emma Lazarus 1988

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Diane Lefer has served as a bilingual interviewer for an AIDS prevention and education project in Harlem and the South Bronx and as a volunteer legal assistant and interpreter for immigrants held in detention centers in Los Angeles County. She has worked with Spanish and French-speaking torture survivors in Los Angeles and helped create bilingual theater in Los Angeles and Pasadena.

Membership

Diane Lefer is a member of PEN USA, NoPassport Pan American collective, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Connections

Father:

Henry Lefer

Mother:

Sylvia Lefer

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2010
• The Personal Website of Diane Lefer