Trina Porte was born in Brooklyn, New York to parents Al and Renee (born Schlissel), youngest sister of Steven, Jamie (deceased at 2 1/2 months), and Ariel. Her collected documents began with journals written almost daily from ages 8 to 23, and contain her political writings and hundreds of poems. She grew up in Ossining, New York, then Jonathan, Minnesota, where her parents and Ariel moved in 1972. Al and Renee divorced in 1969, reunited in 1970, and split again in 1974 when Trina moved to St. Paul, Minnesota with Renee. Trina attended St. Paul Open School for high school, and got a B.F.A. in Art and an M. Ed. in Curriculum from the University of Minnesota. Trina's first career, begun in middle school, was in technical theater, working at Chimera, Theater in the Round, Great Northern Theater, Minnesota Dance Theater, The Guthrie, and off-off Broadway at La Mama, St. Clement's, Perry Street and in Summer Stock, prior to college. While attending the University of Minnesota, Trina came out as a lesbian, became a feminist activist, spray painted the Twin Cities as a member of W.E.E.D.S. (Women's Erotic Energy Delights the Spirit) and a survivor of sexual assault, and worked on the ordinance declaring pornography a potential violation of women's civil rights, which grew out of the University of Minnesota Law School class "Pornography and the Law," co-taught by Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon. This changed her life, and Andrea Dworkin became a vital mentor in Trina's life-long work against discrimination and violence in all forms. Trina met her future wife Kristine Cottom initially in 1975 when their mothers worked in community theater together, then met again in 1990, becoming first Domestic Partners in Minneapolis, then getting married legally in Massachusetts. They moved to a small town in upstate New York in 2004, where Trina publishes poetry and anthologies with the small press she created in 2000, and is very active in local politics and writers' community. Trina has also shown artwork and/or read poetry in New York, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Grand Marais, Iowa City, Iowa, Northampton, Massachusetts, Housatonic, Massachusetts, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, New Lebanon, New York, Chatham, New York, Woodstock, New York, and Tiberius, Israel.
From the guide to the Trina Porte papers., 1968-2011., (Minnesota Historical Society)
