Dodie Bellamy (born 1951) is an American novelist, nonfiction author, journalist, educator and editor. Her book, ''Cunt-Ups'' (2001) won the 2002 Firecracker Alternative Book Award. Her work is frequently associated with that of the New Narrative movement in San Francisco and fellow writers

Dennis Cooper Dennis Cooper (born January 10, 1953) is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist. He is best known for the ''George Miles Cycle'', a series of five semi-autobiographical novels published between 1989 and 2000 and describe ...

Kathy Acker Kathy Acker (April 18, 1947 isputed– November 30, 1997) was an American experimental novelist, playwright, essayist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with themes such as childhood trau ...

Kevin Killian Kevin Killian (December 24, 1952 – June 15, 2019) was an American poet, author, editor, and playwright primarily of LGBT literature. ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'', which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, wo ...

, and

Eileen Myles Eileen Myles (born December 9, 1949) is a LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. No ...

Early life and education

Bellamy was born Doris Jane Bellamy in 1951 in

North Hammond North Hammond is a neighborhood in western Hammond, Indiana, north of the Grand Calumet River and south of Wolf Lake. It is bounded to the south by Central Hammond, to the west by the Chicago neighborhood of Hegewisch, to the north by Robert ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

. She grew up in

and went on to study at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universi ...

. She graduated in 1973.

San Francisco and New Narrative

Bellamy moved to San Francisco in 1978. She was a core member of The Feminist Writers’ Guild. Bellamy is one of the originators in the

New Narrative New Narrative is a movement and theory of experimental writing launched in San Francisco in the late 1970s by Robert Glück and Bruce Boone. New Narrative strove to represent subjective experience honestly without pretense that a text can be absol ...

literary movement of the early and mid 1980s. The movement attempts to use the tools of experimental fiction, like transgression, porn, gossip, and memoir, as well as French critical theory and incorporates them to narrative storytelling. Bellamy was a co-editor along with, Kevin Killian, of the New Narrative anthology ''Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative, 1977–1997.''

Works

Bellamy published her first novel, ''The Letters of Mina Harker'', in 1998 and follows minor character from Bram Stoker's '' Dracula'' and fictionalizes her as a woman living in 1980s San Francisco. The book was re-published in 2021 by Semiotext(e). She published a memoir made up of blog entries, called ''The Buddhist'', in 2011 which follows a similar format as Dennis Cooper's ''The Sluts''. Bellamy's book features a self-destructive affair with a third-rate self-help guru. ''The TV Sutras'', was a 2014 memoir that draws heavily from her own experience in the cult Eckankar. Bellamy's memoir and essay collections include ''Pink Steam'' (2004), ''Academonia'' (2006), and ''When the Sick Rule the World'' (2015). The writer's poetry collections include ''Cunt-Ups'' (2001), a feminist reworking of the cut-up technique practiced by

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

and Brion Gysin, which received the Firecracker Award for Innovative Poetry, and ''Cunt Norton'' (2013). ''Barf Manifesto'' (2008), was influence by the writer's intimate and working relationship with

. A collection of new essays, ''Bellamy Is on Our Mind'', was published in 2020 by Wattis ICA/Semiotext(e). Bellamy has stated that she draws inspiration from

Conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

and writing practices, including cut-ups and generated texts. Bellamy has also directed the San Francisco literary non-profit and writing lab, Small Press Traffic. She has taught creative writing at the San Francisco Art Institute,

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...

, Naropa University,

Antioch University Los Angeles Antioch University Los Angeles (AULA) is a campus of Antioch University in Culver City, California. Background Antioch College was founded in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Horace Mann, Antioch College’s first president's goal was to create an educat ...

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different ...

California College of the Arts California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996 it opened a second campus in Sa ...

, and the

California Institute of the Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art university in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both ...

Published works

Story, novels, and poetry collections

* ''Real: The Letters of Mina Harker and Sam d'Allesandro'' * ''Fat Chance'' * ''Cunt-Ups'' * ''The Letters of Mina Harker'' * ''Pink Steam'' * ''Academonia'' * Barf Manifesto * ''Cunt Norton'' * The Beating of Our Hearts * ''The TV Sutras'' * ''When the Sick Rule the World'' * ''The Buddhist'' * ''Bee Reaved''

Artist monographs

* ''B. Wurtz: Farm 5''

Contributing writer or editor in essay collections

* ''a queer anthology of healing'' * ''Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative Writing 1977–1997'' * ''Dodie Bellamy Is on Our Mind'' * ''Small Blows Against Encroaching Totalitarianism Volume 1'' * ''As Yet Untitled: Artists and Writers in Collaboration'' * ''Conversations at the Wartime Cafe: a Decade of War 2001–2011'' * ''Say Bye to Reason and Hi to Everything'' * ''Feminine Hijinx'' * ''High Risk: An Anthology of Forbidden Writings'' * ''The Big Book of Erotic Ghost Stories'' * ''The New Fuck You: Adventures In Lesbian Reading'' * ''Pills, Thrills, Chills, and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person''

Bibliography

*''Feminine Hijinx'' (1991) *''Real: The Letters of Mina Harker and Sam D'Allesandro'' (1994) . *''Broken English'' (1996) * *''Cunt-ups'' (2001) *''The Letters of Mina Harker'' (2004) *''Academonia'' (2006) * *''Barf Manifesto'' (2008) *''Pink Steam'' (2008) *''Cunt Norton'' (2013) *''The TV Sutras'' (2014) *''The Beating of Our Hearts'' (2014) * ''When the Sick Rule the World'' (2015) *''Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative Writing 1977–1997'' (co-edited with Kevin Killian; Nightboat Books, 2017)

References

External links

*
''Academonia'' at Krupskaya Books

Lodestar Quarterly interview

* Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Bellamy, Dodie Living people 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American women writers American editors American women journalists American women novelists Bisexual women writers California College of the Arts faculty American LGBT novelists American LGBT journalists LGBT people from Indiana People from Hammond, Indiana San Francisco State University faculty Writers from San Francisco 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers Bisexual academics American women academics 1951 births 21st-century American LGBT people Bisexual journalists American bisexual writers