Dodie Bellamy

An essayist, poet, and novelist whose genre-bending work addresses feminism, sexuality, and queerness, Dodie Bellamy is a fundamental and active member of San Francisco’s literary avant garde. After attending Indiana University, Bellamy relocated to the San Francisco Bay area in 1978, where she studied with Kathleen Fraser and Robert Glück. An original practitioner of New Narrative, she is the coeditor (with spouse, poet Kevin Killian) of Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative, 1977-1997. The anthology is the first dedicated to New Narrative texts, a literary movement Killian once described as “fueled by punk, pop, porn, French theory and the social struggle to change writing forever.”

She is the author of several works. Her memoir and essay collections include When the Sick Rule the World (2015), Academonia (2006), and Pink Steam (2004). Bellamy’s poetry collections include Cunt-Ups (2001), a feminist revision of the cut-up technique practiced by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, which received the Firecracker Award for Innovative Poetry, and Cunt Norton (2013), which brings Bellamy’s radical approach to canonical, anthologized poetry. Barf Manifesto (2008), inspired by Bellamy’s personal and professional relationship with Eileen Myles, was named “Best Book Under 30 Pages” by Time Out New York in 2009.

Bellamy maintains strong ties with the art world and has written for exhibits at several museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. In 2006, Bellamy curated Kathy Forest, an exhibition of Kathy Acker’s clothing which was shown in San Francisco and New York City. She was the subject of the California College of the Arts Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s On Our Mind series in 2018 and 2019.

From 1995 to 2000, Bellamy served as the executive director of Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center, before which she spent twelve years curating their reading series. She currently teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University and California College of the Arts, and holds a private summer workshop.