Starhawk (born Miriam Simos in St. Paul, Minnesota on June 17, 1951) is an American writer, activist, anarchist and witch. She is well known as a theorist of Paganism, writing Wiccan columns on Beliefnet.com[1], and is one of the foremost popular voices of ecofeminism. Starhawk lives in San Francisco, where she works with Reclaiming, a tradition of Witchcraft that she co-founded in the late 1970s. She is internationally known as a trainer in nonviolence and direct action, and as an activist within the peace movement, women's movement, environmental movement, and anti-globalization movement. She travels and teaches widely in North America, Europe and the Middle East, giving lectures and workshops. She is currently working with United for Peace and Justice, the RANT trainers' collective, Earth Activist Training, and other groups.
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Authorship
Starhawk is the author of numerous non-fiction best-selling works: The Earth Path (2004), The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1979, 1989, 1999), Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics (1982, 1988, 1997), Truth or Dare (1988), Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising (2003). She is the author of a widely read essay, “How We Shut Down the WTO" as well as her web writings. In an early edition of 'The Spiral Dance' she referred to Jews as 'people of color'. This was changed in later editions. With Hilary Valentine she wrote The Twelve Wild Swans: A Journey Into Magic, Healing and Action (2000) a resource book for Pagans. With M. Macha NightMare [2] and Reclaiming Collective, she wrote The Pagan Book of Living and Dying (1997). Circle Round: Raising Children in the Goddess Tradition (1998) was co-written with Anne Hill and Diane Baker. Starhawk's fiction includes The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993), and Walking to Mercury (1997).
Films, music, etc.
Starhawk has contributed to the films Signs Out of Time: The Story of Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas[3], Goddess Remembered, The Burning Times, and Full Circle. She participated in the Reclaiming CDs Chants: Ritual Music, and recorded the guided meditation Way to the Well.
Early life
Starhawk's father, Jack Simos, died when she was 5. Her mother, Bertha Claire Goldfarb Simos, was a professor of social work at UCLA. Both her parents were the children of Jewish immigrants from Russia. In 1973, while she was a film student at UCLA in 1973, Starhawk won the Samuel Goldwyn Award for her novel, A Weight of Gold, a story about Venice, California, where she then lived. Starhawk married Edwin Rahsman in 1977. She is currently married to David Miller.
References
- Salomonsen, Jone (2002). Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-22392-X
- Vale, V. and John Sulak (2001). Modern Pagans. (Interview with Starhawk). San Francisco: Re/Search Publications. ISBN 1-889307-10-6
External links
