Lonidier, Lynn

Lynn Lonidier was a teacher, author, and multimedia performance artist. She majored in music at San Francisco State University where she studied composition with Pauline Oliveros. She later participated in the "Poet in the Schools" program in Northern California schools. Lonidier was active in multimedia theater and performance art, as well as various women's collectives. She was connected with the Lavender Rose Collective and was a "founding mother" of the San Francisco Women's Building.

From the description of Lynn Lonidier papers, 1958-1993 (bulk 1967-1993). (San Francisco Public Library). WorldCat record id: 173621562

Biographical note

Lynn Lonidier was born in Lakeview, Oregon on April 22, 1937. Often describing herself as a "card-carrying anarchafeminist," Lonidier was a teacher, author and multimedia and theater performance artist. As a West Coast writer, she was active in the San Francisco literary scene, especially within the lesbian/feminist community, during the 1970s until the time of her death in 1993. Also a musician, she studied composition and collaborated with Pauline Oliveros at the University of California at San Diego. She also attended San Francisco State University where, as a cellist, she majored in performance. She also received a M. A. in Media/Education in 1975 from the University of Washington at Seattle.

While teaching public school in Northern California in the 1960s, Lonidier participated in the "Poet in the Schools" program. She also helped coordinate the Pegasus Program, sponsored by San Francisco State University, that encouraged public school students to write poetry and publish, under Lonidier's direction, numerous chapbooks. In the mid-1960s, Lonidier helped to design a new series in this program that emphasized the use of audiovisual equipment and techniques in the student creation and performance of poetry and "light show-happenings." She was also interested in encouraging the writing of bilingual poetry, especially Spanish/English, to children in San Francisco's Mission District. During the 1970s and 1980s, she also taught, and lectured on feminist topics in writing and multimedia performance in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California, especially at the San Francisco Women's Building, of which she was a "Founding Mother." She was also a "light-optics artist" in 1969 for the Electric Circus in New York City and also worked in the same capacity at the 1970 World's Fair, held in Japan. This kind of "multimedia" aspect, reflected in the combination of poetry, film, animation, two and three dimensional visual arts and music, in a theatrical or "performance art" setting, characterizes her approach to her life work reflected in this collection.

Lonidier was the recipient of a California Arts Councils grant, a member of the Mission Alliance for a Popular Culture. She was associated with the Feminist Writers Guild as well as other Bay Area based writers' organizations and projects, such as the Lavender Rose Collective founded by Judy Grahn. She performed, read, and lectured extensively throughout San Francisco and the Bay Area at such venues as the Women's Building, Intersection for the Arts, Mission Cultural Center, Small Press Traffic as well as many other San Francisco cultural spaces and cafes. She also participated in the 1988 National Poetry Week Festival held in San Francisco. In the early 1990s, she also attended the International Women Writers Conference held in Argentina.

Lonidier's published collections of poetry include Clitoris Lost: A Woman's Version of the Creation Myth (1989), The Female Freeway (1970), A Lesbian Estate (1977), Po Tree (1967), and Woman Explorer (1979). Published broadsides include A Jellyfish Swim (1972); Christmas Kitty in Bilingualand, or, What I Did This Year (1986), For Sale: Girl Poet Cheap (1977). She was also published in numerous important poetry journals including The Ladder and the San Francsico Review and poetry collections including She Rises Like the Sun (1989) edited by Janine Canan. Lonidier was also the author of several unpublished novels, plays, and multimedia/theater works which are found in this collection.

Although her work is eclectic, reflecting an interest in eroticism, satire, surrealism as well as politics and popular culture, she considered her poetry mentors to be Robert Duncan and Jerome Rothenberg. Her work, however, consistently presents a lesbian and feminist consciousness and experience, that enriches lesbian literature, especially in its irreverent postmoderism. Lonidier's friends and colleagues included Karen Brodine, Jess Collins (Robert Duncan's long-time companion), Robert Gluck, Barbara Grier, Judy Grahn, Noni Howard, Pauline Oliveros, and Betty Wong. Lonidier died in San Francisco on May 18, 1993.

From the guide to the Lynn Lonidier Papers, 1958-1993, 1967-1993, (James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center, San Francisco Public Library)