Outside Voices: A Memoir of the Berkeley Revolution - Hardcover

by Joan Gelfand (Author)

Berkeley, 1972: a hotbed of creativity where painters, filmmakers, musicians, and writers inspire a young poet.

NYC Big Book Award: Winner in New Adult Non-fiction
NYC Big Book Award: Distinguished Favorite in Women's Issues
International Book Award Winner in U.S. History
Literary Titan Winner
Finalist in the San Francisco Bookfest
Runner Up in the New York City Bookfest

Second-wave feminism, inspired by Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan is swelling into a tsunami. Women are joining together to change power dynamics in politics, the home, and the workplace.

On election day, Joan Gelfand casts her vote for George McGovern and boards a plane from New York to California. With one introduction to a woman musician, Joan's journey to become a writer is born. Embraced by a thriving women's community of artists, filmmakers, musicians, poets, and writers, Joan is encouraged to find her voice.

Mentored by paradigm-changing writers, Joan finds the courage to face her darkest fears through poetry and art, mining the trauma she experienced after losing her father and questioning her Jewish identity. Reminiscent of Paris in the twenties, Greenwich Village in the sixties, and Berlin in the eighties, Berkeley in the seventies was the "it" city of America.

Outside Voices reports the ups and downs of finding one's way as an artist, living with a women's band, forging an independent Jewish identity, founding a women's restaurant, and becoming a published writer and songwriter while exploring the limits of sexuality and spirituality. The story includes road trips to music festivals in the woods, beaches in Mexico, concerts in Southern California, and a retreat in the Pacific Northwest.

A triumphant story of determination and will, Outside Voices is a backstage look at the women's movement that sets the stage for decades of change. This book is a firsthand look at how the power of community emboldened innovation, social change, and self-discovery.

Author Biography

Joan Gelfand is an author, poet, and literary critic whose recent memoir, Outside Voices: A Memoir of the Berkeley Revolution, has won the New York City Big Book Award and the International Book Award. The book offers an intimate portrait of Berkeley in 1972 and the transformative power of the women's movement.

Her novel Extreme, a finalist for the International Book Award, tells the story of a Silicon Valley startup.

Gelfand has published three poetry collections: The Long Blue Room, A Dreamer's Guide to Cities and Streams, and Seeking Center, showcasing her range as a poet and writer. Her poetry has been featured internationally, with The Ferlinghetti School of Poetics--a poetry film based on her work--screening at twenty international film festivals including Cannes and London. The film also earned a Certificate of Merit from the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

Joan has won twenty-five writing awards including the Effie Lee Morris Prize for Poetry, The Red Room Authors Award, The Chaffin Fiction Award, and others.

Joan's essays and reviews have been published widely including in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Dreams and the Unexplainable and Chicken Soup for the Soul: Dreams and Premonitions, the Huffington Post, LA Review of Books, San Francisco Chronicle, and the art magazine PANK!

For the past decade, Gelfand has been a sought-after writing coach and instructor, teaching at book festivals and writers' conferences. Her book and workshop, both titled You Can Be a Winning Writer, have helped countless writers develop their craft.

A former President of the Women's National Book Association, Gelfand founded and chaired its National Writing Contest. Gelfand is an active member of the National Book Critics Circle and is listed in Who's Who in America.

She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Adam Hertz.