Karen Lindsey

Writer, feminist, and teacher Karen Lindsey (December 3, 1944-April 6, 2023) grew up in Queens NY. Always an activist, she moved to Boston in her twenties and became a key chronicler of the women's movement. Starting in the 1970s as a columnist for The Boston Phoenix and later the Boston Herald American, she raised feminist issues of the day for a broad readership, as well as contributing to feminist publications such as The Second Wave and Sojourner, which was published in Cambridge from 1975 to 2002.

Lindsey constantly encouraged others to see themselves as writers, whether in the feminist writing group she held in her living room or through her formal teaching at Emerson College, their Kasteel Well program in the Netherlands, and at University of Massachusetts, Boston. She brought to her teaching both the clear-eyed focus of a journalist and the creativity of a poet. Her first published book was the1975 collection of poems Falling Off The Roof.

Lindsey's openness about both her struggles and the things she enjoyed (watching figure skating or the wives of Henry VIII) modeled that feminism is anything but a monolithic movement. Her 1995 book Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII also showed that a feminist view of history can make lively and historically accurate reading.

Lindsey's support of her friends and their support of her were legendary. She wrote about this often, including in her 1981 book Friends as Family. She was coauthor of several books, including of Doctor Susan Love's Breast Book. Her commitment to writing and original thinking inspired her friends, colleagues, and students to do the same in countless books and other writings.