Elana Dykewomon 1949-2022

1949 - 2022

Elana Dykewomon (Nachman) 1949-2022

Oakland, CA — Elana Dykewomon (Nachman), trailblazing and brilliant lesbian Jewish author, poet, and community activist died on August 7 at her home in Oakland, CA surrounded by beloved friends and family. She was a generous, warm hearted friend, absolutely committed to the creation and preservation of lesbian culture.

In a five-decade career that began with the coming-of-age novel "Riverfinger Women," she was outspoken in her writings. In 1997, she published her Jewish lesbian historical saga, "Beyond the Pale". "Risk", published in 2009, is about family, addiction, and community. In addition to her novels, Elana published five collections of poems and short stories. From 1987-1994, she brought her considerable editorial talents and vision to Sinister Wisdom, a lesbian literary journal. In 2021 she co-edited a special issue with Judith Katz titled "To Be a Jewish Dyke in the 21st Century."

Elana was born in New York City on Oct. 11,1949. Her family moved to Puerto Rico in1958. She went to high school at Windsor Mt. School in Lenox, MA. After studying at Reed College in Portland, Ore., she received a bachelor's degree in creative writing from the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, CA.

She left California for Massachusetts in the early 1970s where she first lived in Ashfield and then inNorthampton. She helped form Lesbian Gardens in Northampton as well as the Women's Film Coop, and Magaera Press which published Elana's first book of poetry, They Will Know Me By My Teeth.

In the late 1970s, Elana left the Pioneer Valley settling first in Coos Bay, Oregon and then moving to Oakland, California. She earned a MFA of creative writing from San Francisco State University, where she later taught composition and creative writing for nearly two decades. She continued working as a poet, an essayist, and fiction writer as well as a being a community activist. She was an outspoken advocate for the rights of Palestinian people. She was active in the organization Old Lesbians Organizing for Change, and until last year, she ran a monthly writing group for cancer survivors.

Dykewomon was one of 5 playwrights, out of 240, to have works selected for this year's Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Her play "How to Let Your Lover Die" is about love and loss that she wrote after Susan Levinkind, her wife and partner, died of Lewy body dementia. Elana died twenty minutes before the livestream event of the play.

"I would like to see it at least have a reading before I die, which I expect to do," she said in an interview in July. "But it's not so tragic to die."