Background
Pratt, Minnie Bruce was born on September 12, 1946 in Selma, Alabama, United States. Daughter of William Luther Junior and Virginia Earl (Brown) Pratt.
( Selected as ForeWord Magazine’s 1999 Gay/Lesbian Book ...)
Selected as ForeWord Magazine’s 1999 Gay/Lesbian Book of the Year In Pratt's fourth volume of poems, Walking Back Up Depot Street, we are led by powerful images into what is both a story of the segregated rural South and the story of a white woman named Beatrice who is leaving that home for the postindustrial North. Beatrice searches for the truth behind the public story-the official history-of the land of her childhood. She struggles to free herself from the lies she was taught while growing up-and she finds the other people who are also on this journey. In these dramatically multivocal narrative poems, we hear the words and rhythms of Bible Belt preachers, African-American blues and hillbilly gospel singers, and sharecropper country women and urban lesbians. We hear the testimony of freed slaves and white abolitionists speaking against Klan violence, fragments of speeches by union organizers and mill workers, and snatches of songs from those who marched on the road to Selma. Beatrice walks back into the past and finds the history of resistance that she has never been taught; she listens to her fellow travelers as they all get ready to create the future.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0822956950/?tag=2022091-20
( Suffused with pain and power, Minnie Bruce Pratt's poet...)
Suffused with pain and power, Minnie Bruce Pratt's poetry is as evocative of the swamps and streets of the southern United States as it is of the emotional lives of those too often forced into the margins of society. Vivid, lush, and intensely honest, these poems capture the rough edges of the world and force us to pay attention.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0822958260/?tag=2022091-20
(Politics. Cultural Writing. New to SPD. The award-winning...)
Politics. Cultural Writing. New to SPD. The award-winning feminist and lesbian press Firebrand Books closed its doors last year after sixteen years in the business. The authors of YOURS IN STRUGGLE -- Elly Bulkin, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and Barbara Smith -- have now made the 1988 Firebrand edition of their collaborative work available through SPD. They write, YOURS IN STRUGGLE happened because we were able to talk to each other in the fist place, despite our very different identities and backgrounds -- white Christian-raised Southerner, Afro-American, Ashkenazi Jew. Each of us speaks only for herself, and we do not necessarily agree with each other. Yet we believe our cooperation on this book indicates concrete possibilities for coalition work.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0932379532/?tag=2022091-20
(Poetry. LGBT Studies. The first title from Sapphic Classi...)
Poetry. LGBT Studies. The first title from Sapphic Classics, a co-edition between Sinister Wisdom Magazine and A Midsummer Night's Press to reprint seminal works of lesbian poetry. "In spare and forceful language Minnie Bruce Pratt tells a moving story of loss and recuperation, discovering linkages between her own disenfranchisement and the condition of other minorities. She makes it plain, in this masterful sequence of poems, that the real crime against nature is violence and oppression.--From the Judges' Statement, Lamont Poetry Prize 1989, CRIME AGAINST NATURE "Minnie Bruce Pratt's CRIME AGAINST NATURE is, for a number of reasons, a work at the poetic crossroads. It extends the subject of love poetry; it extends the subject of feminist and lesbian poetry; it looks in several directions through the lens of a strong, sensuous poetics, through that fusion of experience with imagination that is the core of poetry, and through cadences founded in the music of speech, tightened and drawn to an individual pitch."--Adrienne Rich
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1938334043/?tag=2022091-20
(A reissue of the first collection of poetry by the author...)
A reissue of the first collection of poetry by the author of Crime Against Nature evokes the lesbian odyssey in search of a place to live as one chooses and captures the eroticism and sensuality of love for another woman. Simultaneous.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563410230/?tag=2022091-20
(A reissue of the first collection of poetry by the author...)
A reissue of the first collection of poetry by the author of Crime Against Nature evokes the lesbian odyssey in search of a place to live as one chooses and captures the eroticism and sensuality of love for another woman. Simultaneous.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563410249/?tag=2022091-20
Pratt, Minnie Bruce was born on September 12, 1946 in Selma, Alabama, United States. Daughter of William Luther Junior and Virginia Earl (Brown) Pratt.
Bachelor with honors, University Alabama, 1968. Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature, University North Carolina, 1979.
Lecturer Fayetteville (North Carolina) State University, 1975-1980. Assistant professor Shaw University, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1980-1982. Adjunct lecturer Women's Studies Program, George Washington University, Washington, 1984-1988.
Adjunct lecturer, visiting assistant professor Women's Studies Program, University Maryland, College Park, 1984-1993. Graduate faculty Union Institute, Cincinnati, 1990—2003. Jane Watson Irwin chair in women's studies Hamilton College, 2002—2003.
Professor writing and women's studies Syracuse University, 2005. Writer-in-residence The Community Writers' Project, Syracuse, New York, 1988, The Literature Festival at St. Mary's College, St. Mary's City, Maryland, 1999, National Young Men’s Christian Association Writers Voice Program, New York City, 2000. Scholar, practitioner-in-residence The Claremont Colleges, 2007, member editorial board Stone Canoe, since 2006, Cold Mountain, since 2007, with Center Women's History Culture, Duke University, 2006.
( Selected as ForeWord Magazine’s 1999 Gay/Lesbian Book ...)
(A reissue of the first collection of poetry by the author...)
(A reissue of the first collection of poetry by the author...)
( Suffused with pain and power, Minnie Bruce Pratt's poet...)
(Politics. Cultural Writing. New to SPD. The award-winning...)
(Poetry. LGBT Studies. The first title from Sapphic Classi...)
(Reprint)
Member Poetry Society of America (judge Celia B. Wagner Award 1992), National Writers Union, Phi Beta Kappa.
Married Marvin Eugene Weaver II, December 19, 1966 (divorced November 1976). Children: Ransom Jones Weaver, Benjamin Carr Weaver. Life partner: Leslie Feinberg, July 31, 1992.