Judith Katz

Judith Katz (born 1951) is an American playwright, thespian, and novelist. Her debut novel, Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound (1992), won a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.

Early life and education

Judith Katz was born in 1951 in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she grew up in a traditional Jewish family.^[1][2][3]

She graduated with a bachelor's in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1973.^[1][2] While at UMass Amherst, she experienced homophobia at the student women's center, which led her to come out as a lesbian by publishing the article "Hard Ass Dyke Tells All" in the school newspaper.^[1]

Career

Katz is known for her work as a playwright, novelist, and theater-maker. Katz's writing frequently features lesbian and Jewish characters, including in both of her novels.^[1][2]

Her first full-length play was The Franny Chicago Play, which was originally produced in 1973.^[1] The play explores the relationships among three lesbian women, two of whom are grappling with the third's suicide.^[4][5]

Later in 1973, she moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where she worked with the Magic Theatre as a playwright-in-residence, technician, producer, and performer until 1977.^[1][2]

In 1977, she returned to western Massachusetts, where she obtained a master's in theater from Smith College in 1979 and co-founded the Chrysalis Theatre Eclectic.^[1] For her master's thesis, she wrote Tribes: A Play of Dreams, a family drama with allusions to women's history.^[2][6]

Katz moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1983 to work with the feminist theater group At the Foot of the Mountain.^[1][7] While with the group, she wrote and performed in plays such as The Monster in My Mother's House.^[8]

In 1992, she published her first novel, Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound.^[1][2][3][7] The book tells the story of a woman named Nadine Pagan as she deals with her difficult Jewish family and settles in a lesbian Jewish community known as New Chelm, featuring references to Jewish mysticism, including the dybbuk of Jewish folklore.^[2][9][10] It won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction the following year.^[1][2][11]

Her next novel, The Escape Artist, was released in 1997.^[3][7] A historical novel set in early 20th-century Poland and Argentina, it follows a Jewish lesbian girl navigating the underworld of Buenos Aires.^[12]

From the early 1980s until her retirement in 2020, she also worked as an adjunct and academic advisor for the Departments of English and Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota.^[1][2][7] She also taught at the Loft Literary Center and as an adjunct at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Hamline University, and Macalester College.^[1][7] Additionally, Katz has long been involved in lesbian feminist and peace organizing.^[1][13]

Her papers are held as part of the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies at the University of Minnesota Libraries.^[1]