Summer Brenner (born March 17, 1945) is a writer and an activist. 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;'' ''Dancers and the Dance''; ''My Life in Clothes''; two noir novels with political themes, ''I-5'' and ''Nearly Nowhere,'' also released in France as ''Presque nulle part'' through Gallimard's

Série noire Série noire is a French publishing imprint, founded in 1945 by Marcel Duhamel. It has released a collection of crime fiction of the hardboiled detective thrillers variety published by Gallimard. Anglo-American literature forms the bulk of ...

. 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 The City of Richmond was a local government area about east of Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, Australia. The city covered an area of , and existed from 1855 until 1994. History Richmond was incorporated as a municipality on 24 A ...

and selected by the

California Teachers Association The California Teachers Association (CTA) is a teachers' trade union based in the city of Burlingame, California. The association was initially established in 1863. It is regarded as one of the largest and most powerful teachers' unions in the st ...

for Read Across America. ''Oakland Tales, Lost Secrets of The Town'' received an award from the Oakland Heritage Alliance (OHA). Her work, ''The Missing Lover'', is three novellas with illustrations by

Lewis Warsh Lewis Warsh (9 November 1944 – 15 November 2020) was an American poet, visual artist, professor, prose writer, editor, and publisher. He was a principal member of the second generation of the New York School poets,; however, he has said that � ...

. Her 2024 memoir ''Dust'' was featured in

Literary Hub ''Literary Hub'' or ''LitHub'' is a daily literary website that was launched in 2015 by Grove Atlantic president and publisher Morgan Entrekin, American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame editor Terry McDonell, and '' Electric Literatur ...

in June 2024. Her literary papers are available at the

University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially known as UD, UDel, or Delaware) is a Statutory college#Delaware, privately governed, state-assisted Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Newark, Delaware, United States. UD offers f ...

's Special Collections.

Community projects

Brenner is a member of the

Retort collective Retort is a community of about forty writers, teachers, artists, and activists, all self-styled opponents of capital and empire, which has been based for the past two decades in the San Francisco Bay Area. Retort is a gathering of antinomians. It ...

and a participant in the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Project (2007–present), archived at the RBML,

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. ''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.

Bibliography

Fiction

* ''Dancers and the Dance''. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press. 1990. * ''Presque nulle part''. Paris: Gallimard Série noire 2554. 1999. * ''I-5, A Novel of Crime, Transport, and Sex''. Oakland: PM Press. 2009. * ''My Life in Clothes''. Pasadena: Red Hen Press. 2010. * ''Nearly Nowhere''. Oakland: PM Press. 2012. * ''The Missing Lover''. Brooklyn: Spuyten Duyvil, 2022.

Nonfiction

* ''Dust, A Memoir''. Brooklyn, Spuyten Duyvil, 2024. .

Novels for youth

* ''Ivy, Tale of a Homeless Girl in San Francisco''. Berkeley: Creative Arts. 2000. Illustrated by Marilyn Bogerd. * ''Richmond Tales, Lost Secrets of the Iron Triangle''. Berkeley: Time & Again Press. 2009. Illustrated by Miguel “Bounce” Perez. * ''Ivy, Homeless in San Francisco''. Oakland: PM Press/Daly City: ReachandTeach.com 2011. Illustrated by Brian Bowes. * ''Oakland Tales, Lost Secrets of The Town''. Berkeley: Time & Again Press. 2014. Illustrated by Miguel “Bounce” Perez.

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. . * ''The Unmade Bed: Sensual Writing on Married Love'' (ed. Laura Chester). New York: HarperCollins. 1992. . * ''The Stiffest Corpse'' (ed. Andrei Codrescu). San Francisco: City Lights Books. 1989. . * ''American Poets Say Good-Bye to the 20th Century'' (ed. Codrescu & Rosenthal). New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. 1996. . * ''Infinite City'', ''A San Francisco Atlas'', essay “Red Sinking, Green Soaring” (Rebecca Solnit). Berkeley: University of California Press. 2010. . * ''Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail: Stories of Crime, Love and Rebellion'' (ed. Phillips & Gibbons). Oakland: PM Press. 2011. . * ''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. . * ''Jewish Noir'' (ed. Kenneth Wishnia). Oakland: PM Press. 2015. . * ''The Year’s Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016'' (ed. Rusch & Helfers). Toronto: Kobo Inc. 2016. . * ''River of Fire: Commons, Crisis and the Imagination'' (ed. Cal Winslow). Arlington, MA: The Pumping Station. 2016. . * ''Berkeley Noir'' (ed. Jerry Thompson & Owen Hill). Brooklyn: Akashic Books. 2020. .

References

External links

* {{authority control 1945 births 21st-century American novelists 20th-century American novelists American women novelists American crime fiction writers American young adult novelists American women short story writers 20th-century American short story writers 21st-century American short story writers American women poets 20th-century American poets 21st-century American poets Activists from the San Francisco Bay Area Living people American women writers of young adult literature