Dodie Bellamy / Biographical Note
Dodie Bellamy, who grew up
in the Calumet region of Indiana and studied at Indiana University, has become
one of today's most celebrated innovative writers since her epistolary masterpiece,
The Letters of Mina Harker, first appeared in the 1990s. Identified
as one of the original "New Narrative" writers and widely compared
to
Dennis Cooper, Kathy Acker, and
Eileen Myles for
her unapologetic use
of sexuality, politics, and narrative experimentation, Bellamy frequently writes
on feminism, cultural politics, literary transgression, queer culture, AIDS,
and body issues.
Bellamy's various titles include a wide number of hybrid and innovative books that challenge and flaunt the boundaries of genre: Real: The Letters of Mina Harker and Sam D'Allesandro (Talisman House, 1995), her epistolary collaboration with the late Sam D'Allesandro, which tackles AIDS, sexual transgression, and the desire for the forbidden; Feminine Hijinx (Hanuman, 1990); Cunt-Ups (Tender Buttons, 2002), a radical feminist revision of the "cut-up" pioneered by William Burroughs and Bryon Gysin, which won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Poetry; and Fat Chance (Nomados, 2004). The Letters of Mina Harker was reprinted in 2004 by University of Wisconsin Press with an introduction by Dennis Cooper. Also in 2004, San Francisco's Suspect Thoughts Press published Pink Steam, a collection of fiction, memoirs, and essays. Academonia, another cross-genre collection-essays and fictions that incorporate essay elements-is forthcoming from Factory School. Bellamy's writing has appeared in, among others, the anthologies Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache, Best American Erotica 2001, High Risk, The New Fuck You, and Big Book of Erotic Ghost Stories. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Bookforum, Out/Look, The San Diego Reader, Nest, and elsewhere. Bellamy is currently working on The Fourth Form, a multi-dimensional sex novel.
In 1998, Bellamy won the
San Francisco Bay Guardian "Goldie" Award for Literature. For
five years she served as director of the seminal San Francisco writing lab,
Small Press Traffic. Currently she is an associate faculty member in the MFA
program at Antioch Los Angeles and a lecturer in the Creative Writing Department
of San Francisco State University. With Kevin
Killian, she has edited over 100 issues of the literary/art zine Mirage
#4/Period(ical).
Publications
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Pink Steam | Excerpt | Suspect Thoughts 2004 | |
 |
Fat Chance | Nomados 2003 | |
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Cunt-Ups | Excerpt | Tender Buttons Books 2001 | Winner of the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award for Poetry | |
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The Letters of Mina Harker | Excerpt | Hard Press 1998 | University of Wisconsin Press 2004 | |
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Hallucinations | Meow Press 1997 | |
 |
Feminine Hijinx | Hanuman Books 1990 | |
 |
Real: The Letters of Mina Harker and Sam D’Allesandro (with Sam D’Allesandro) | Talisman House 1994 | |