Summer Brenner

Summer Brenner
Born	(1945-03-17) March 17, 1945 (age 80) Washington, D.C.
Occupation	Writer
Children	Felix Brenner, Joanna Bean Martin
Website	summerbrenner.com

Summer Brenner (born March 17, 1945) is a writer and an activist. ^[1] Brenner's works include short stories, novellas, noir crime, social justice youth novels, poetry, and a memoir.

Works

Brenner's publications include Dust: A Memoir; ^[2] Dancers and the Dance; My Life in Clothes; two noir novels with political themes, I-5 ^[3] and Nearly Nowhere, also released in France as Presque nulle part through Gallimard's Série noire.

Brenner's youth novel, Richmond Tales, Lost Secrets of the Iron Triangle was also chosen as the first "One City, One Book" selection for the City of Richmond and selected by the California Teachers Association for Read Across America. ^[4]

Oakland Tales, Lost Secrets of The Town received an award from the Oakland Heritage Alliance (OHA). ^[5]

Her work, The Missing Lover, is three novellas with illustrations by Lewis Warsh. Her 2024 memoir Dust was featured in Literary Hub in June 2024. ^[6]

Her literary papers are available at the University of Delaware's Special Collections. ^[7]

Community projects

Brenner is a member of the Retort collective and a participant in the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Project (2007–present), ^[8] archived at the RBML, Columbia University.

Where We’re From is an inter-generational, cross-cultural oral history, poetry, and photography project for Richmond youth and their families in partnership with photographer Ruth Morgan and Community Works West. ^[9]

Bibliography

Fiction

• Dancers and the Dance. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press. 1990. ISBN   0-918273-75-7
• Presque nulle part. Paris: Gallimard Série noire 2554. 1999. ISBN   2-07-049800-X
• I-5, A Novel of Crime, Transport, and Sex. Oakland: PM Press. 2009. ISBN   978-1-60486-019-1
• My Life in Clothes. Pasadena: Red Hen Press. 2010. ISBN   978-1-59709-163-3
• Nearly Nowhere. Oakland: PM Press. 2012. ISBN   978-1-60486-306-2
• The Missing Lover. Brooklyn: Spuyten Duyvil, 2022. ISBN   978-1-933132-28-0 , 978-1-956005-50-9

Nonfiction

• Dust, A Memoir. Brooklyn, Spuyten Duyvil, 2024. ISBN   978-1-959556-46-6.

Novels for youth

• Ivy, Tale of a Homeless Girl in San Francisco. Berkeley: Creative Arts. 2000. Illustrated by Marilyn Bogerd. ISBN   0-88739-287-3
• Richmond Tales, Lost Secrets of the Iron Triangle. Berkeley: Time & Again Press. 2009. Illustrated by Miguel “Bounce” Perez. ISBN   978-0-9779741-4-6
• Ivy, Homeless in San Francisco. Oakland: PM Press/Daly City: ReachandTeach.com 2011. Illustrated by Brian Bowes. ISBN   978-1-60486-317-8
• Oakland Tales, Lost Secrets of The Town. Berkeley: Time & Again Press. 2014. Illustrated by Miguel “Bounce” Perez. ISBN   978-0-9779741-6-0

Poetry collections / chapbooks

• Everyone Came Dressed as Water. Albuquerque: The Grasshopper Press. 1973.
• From the Heart to the Center. Berkeley: The Figures. 1977.
• The Soft Room. Berkeley: The Figures. 1978.
• One Minute Movies. San Francisco: Thumbscrew Press. 1996.
• The Missing Lover, collages by Lewis Warsh. Brooklyn: Spuyten Duyvil. 2006.
• Do You Ever Think of Me? Ontario: Rob McLennan above/ground press. 2021.

Anthologies (selection)

• Rising Tides: 20th Century Women Poets (ed. Laura Chester). New York: Washington Square Press, Simon & Schuster. 1973.
• Deep Down: The New Sensual Writing by Women (ed. Laura Chester). Boston: Faber & Faber.1988. ISBN   0-571-12957-9.
• The Unmade Bed: Sensual Writing on Married Love (ed. Laura Chester). New York: HarperCollins. 1992. ISBN   0-06-016609-6.
• The Stiffest Corpse (ed. Andrei Codrescu). San Francisco: City Lights Books. 1989. ISBN   0-87286-213-5.
• American Poets Say Good-Bye to the 20th Century (ed. Codrescu & Rosenthal). New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. 1996. ISBN   1-56858-071-1.
• Infinite City, A San Francisco Atlas, essay “Red Sinking, Green Soaring” (Rebecca Solnit). Berkeley: University of California Press. 2010. ISBN   978-0-520-26249-2.
• Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail: Stories of Crime, Love and Rebellion (ed. Phillips & Gibbons). Oakland: PM Press. 2011. ISBN   978-1-60486-096-2.
• Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: Poets and Writers Respond to the March 5, 2007 Bombing of Baghdad’s “Street of Booksellers” (ed. Beau Beausoleil & Deema Shehabi, guest editor Summer Brenner). Oakland: PM Press. 2012. ISBN   978-1-60486-590-5.
• Jewish Noir (ed. Kenneth Wishnia). Oakland: PM Press. 2015. ISBN   978-1-62963-111-0.
• The Year’s Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016 (ed. Rusch & Helfers). Toronto: Kobo Inc. 2016. ISBN   978-1-987879-43-8.
• River of Fire: Commons, Crisis and the Imagination (ed. Cal Winslow). Arlington, MA: The Pumping Station. 2016. ISBN   978-0-9849216-6-9.
• Berkeley Noir (ed. Jerry Thompson & Owen Hill). Brooklyn: Akashic Books. 2020. ISBN   978-1-61775-797-6.

References

1. "Summer Brenner". PM Press. Retrieved 2022-05-09.
2. "Dust".
3. "Sex Traffickers on Interstate 5". East Bay Express | Oakland, Berkeley & Alameda. 2009-04-22. Retrieved 2022-05-09.
4. "Read Across America Book Selection" (PDF). Educator: 50–51. February 2015.
5. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2024-05-28.
6. Vonk, Levi (2024-06-16) "The Paradox of the Contemporary Southern Writer" https://lithub.com/the-paradox-of-the-contemporary-southern-writer/
7. "Summer Brenner papers | Manuscript and Archival Collection Finding Aids". library.udel.edu. Retrieved 2022-05-09.
8. "Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here". Liverpool Arab Arts Festival. Retrieved 2022-05-09.
9. "Review". Teachers & Writers Magazine. 40. 2008.

External links

• Official website