Robin Morgan was born January 29, 1941, in Lake Worth, Florida, the daughter of Faith Berkeley Morgan. She was a precocious child and so was put to work as a child model and actor, but despite her work in radio and television, she vowed to become a poet and took classes at Columbia University, although she did not matriculate. In the early 1960s she worked as a freelance editor and literary agent. In 1962 she married poet Kenneth Pitchford. The couple had one child, Blake Morgan Pitchford. They later divorced.
Throughout the 1960s Morgan published poetry and contributed articles to such literary journals as The Sewanee Review and to such leftist publications as Rat, Win, and Liberation . By the late 1960s, after involvement in civil rights and peace activism, she committed herself to feminism, first becoming involved with the New York Radical Women, and later identifying as a radical feminist. During her time in New York Radical Women, she organized public actions with the group WITCH (Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell). These actions included placing a "hex" on Wall Street, demonstrating before the Miss America Pageant in 1968, and protesting the New York Bridal Fair in 1969. During this time Morgan continued to write poetry and feminist works, publishing both Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement (named one of the 100 Most Influential Books of the 20th Century by the American Librarians' Association) in 1970, and her germinal first collection of poems, Monster in 1972.
By 1974 Morgan had become involved with Ms. magazine, serving as a columnist, and eventually contributing editor, editor-in-chief, and international contributing editor. Her affiliation with Ms. was on-going as of 2009. Morgan has published more than 20 books, including six prize-winning collections of poetry, such as Upstairs in the Garden: New and Selected Poems (1990) and A Hot January (1999) ; five books of fiction, including The Burning Time (2006); and numerous nonfiction works, including Saturday's Child: A Memoir (2001) plus such works on feminism as The Anatomy of Freedom: Feminism, Physics, and Global Politics (1982), the best-selling The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism (1989, revised ed. 2001) and her now classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology (1984) and Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium (2003). She has given numerous lectures to universities and feminist groups, both national and international, contributed many articles to literary, feminist, and mainstream publications; founded the Sisterhood Is Global Institute (www.SIGI.org) and co-founded and has served on the board of many organizations, including The Women's Media Center, Feminist Women's Health Network, and the National Battered Women's Refuge Network. She continued to publish and remain actively involved in global feminism at the time this collection was processed (December 2009).
From the guide to the Papers of Robin Morgan, (inclusive), (bulk), 1929-1991, 1968-1986, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)
