A Celebration of Minnie Bruce Pratt and Her Writing

The Women’s and Gender Studies Department invites you to this virtual celebration of Minnie Bruce Pratt and Her Writing.

Minnie Bruce Pratt, the celebrated poet, essayist, feminist and LGBTQ+ activist, educator, died in July 2023.  Pratt came to Syracuse University in 2005 as professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Writing and Rhetoric at Syracuse University, where she also served as faculty for a developing LGBTQ program.

Pratt published eight books of poetry: “The Sound of One Fork,” “We Say We Love Each Other,” “Crime Against Nature,” “Walking Back Up Depot Street,” “The Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems,” “Inside the Money Machine” and “Magnified.” “Crime Against Nature,” on Pratt’s relationship to her two sons as a lesbian mother, was chosen as the Lamont Poetry Selection by the Academy of American Poets, an annual award given for the best second full-length book of poetry by a U.S. author. “Crime Against Nature” was also chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and given the American Library Association Gay and Lesbian Book Award for Literature. “The Dirt She Ate” received the 2003 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Pratt also received a Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammett award given by the Fund for Free Expression to writers “who have been victimized by political persecution.”

Pratt’s book of autobiographical and political essays, “Rebellion: Essays 1980-1991,” was a finalist in nonfiction for the Lambda Literary Awards. This volume includes her essay “Identity: Skin Blood Heart,” which was adopted for teaching use in hundreds of college courses and community groups.