Elana Dykewomon

October 11, 1949 - August 7, 2022

Beloved, brilliant, radical, Jewish lesbian writer Elana Dykewomon (Nachman), age 72, died on August 7, 2022, in her Oakland home surrounded by friends and family and her faithful dog, Alice (B Toklas).

Elana’s life was about celebrating lesbians and lesbian culture. She was held in great regard, locally and globally for the social change she cultivated throughout her life with her words and presence.

She started her career as a writer and community organizer in Northampton, Massachusetts in the early1970’s and moved to the west coast in the late 70’s.

Elana promoted and worked with numerous organizations in the Bay Area: Lavender LEAF (Lesbian Emergency Action Fund), Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, SF Dyke March, Bay Area Lesbian Archives, James C.

Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the SF Public Library, and Old Lesbians Organizing for Change. Elana was also a member of Women In Black, an international organization of women against war. Elana Dykewomon leaves a legacy of three novels: the groundbreaking Riverfinger Women (1974) about lesbian life in the early 1970s; Beyond the Pale (1997) imagining the lives of Jewish immigrant lesbians living in NYC in the early 1900’s; and Risk (2009) about a fat, Jewish, lesbian who gambles her way to self awareness. Dykewomon authored five books of poetry and short stories: They Will Know Me

By My Teeth (1976); Fragments From Lesbos (1981); Nothing Will Be As Sweet As The Taste: Selected Poems 1974–1994 (1995); Moon Creek Road (2003); and What Can I Ask: New and Selected Poems 1975-2014 (2015).

Elana’s prose, poetry and essays appear in numerous national and international anthologies and journals. From 1987–1995, she edited and co-edited Sinister Wisdom, A Multicultural Lesbian Literary and Art Journal, and in 2021, a special issue: To Be a Jewish Dyke in the 21st Century. Dykewomon received numerous commendations for her writing. In 1997, Beyond the Pale won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. In 2022, Riverfinger Women won the Lee Lynch Classic Award and Elana won the Golden Crown Literary Society Trailblazer Award for her lifetime achievements and contributions to women loving women literature. Dykewomon taught composition and creative writing at SF State University and at the Women’s Cancer Resource Center in Berkeley, CA. She also created long-term lesbian writing groups. Elana’s last creative work, How to Let Your Lover Die, was featured, to great acclaim, at the SF Playwright’s Festival in 2022. The play conveys the pathos of her life-partner Susan Levinkind dying of Lewy body dementia.

Little known facts about Elana: She loved the open road, Mad Magazine, the SF Chronicle Saturday quiz and her work as a manual type setter.

In 2016, when Elana knew that her partner Susan was dying, she turned to her and said: “We had a great ride, didn’t we?” Towards the end of her own life, Elana wrote: “I have had a lucky, full, wonderful life.”