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author
Vanda
I was born and raised in Huntington Station, Long Island, but my mother would never let us call it that. She said we came from South Huntington. Saying we were from Huntington Station, according to...view moreI was born and raised in Huntington Station, Long Island, but my mother would never let us call it that. She said we came from South Huntington. Saying we were from Huntington Station, according to my mother, made it sound like we came from the other side of the tracks. And, well, Mom, we did and that fact has greatly influenced my writing.
My novel, JULIANA (Vol. 1: 1941-1944) was long listed for the MsLexia Novel Award. It was a finalist for the Goethe Book Award and for the Saints and Sinners Emerging Novelist Award. Juliana is the first in a series in which the same characters live out LGBT history in New York City through the decades. My life mission at this time is to honor this history and to let people, gay and straight, know the LGBT community shares a rich cultural history that is as important and as valid as any other minority group’s cultural history.
As a playwright I have received a numerous honors, among them an Edward Albee Fellowship. My play, Vile Affections, published by Original Works was a finalist for a National Lambda Award. My play, Patient HM, which later became The Forgetting Curve, won the Pride Stage and Screen’s Women’s Playwriting Award and another play, Why’d Ya Make Me Wear This, Joe, won Celebration Theater’s (where Naked Boys Singing originated) Best New LGBT Play.
My non-fiction story, “Jack,” was published in Prairie Schooner and another non-fiction piece, “Roger: Lost Between Philosophies,” which appears in Pentimento was selected by New Millennium Writings for Honorable Mention from a submission pool of 1,300.view less