Rachel Pollack (1945-2023)
Author Rachel Pollack, 77, died April 7, 2023 in New York of cancer.
Rachel Grace Pollack was born August 17, 1945 in Brooklyn NY. She attended New York University, graduating with a degree in English, and earned her Masters in English from Claremont Graduate University. She taught English at various institutions and workshops, including Clarion West, and was on the faculty of the MFA Creative Writing program at Goddard College. Pollack lived in the Netherlands from 1973-90 before returning to the US.
Her first story of genre interest was “Pandora’s Bust” (1971), with some of her short stories collected in Burning Sky (1998) and The Beatrix Gates (2019). Her Jack Shade stories were gathered in The Fissure King: A Novel in Five Stories (2017). Her debut novel, space opera Golden Vanity, appeared in 1980. Other novels include Alqua Dreams (1987), Arthur C. Clarke Award winner Unquenchable Fire (1988) and Nebula Award-nominated sequel Temporary Agency (1994), World Fantasy Award winner Godmother Night (1996), and The Child Eater (2014).
As a comics writer, she was best known for her run on Doom Patrol from 1993-95, where she created Coagula, the first transgender superhero in DC Comics. She was a renowned expert in Tarot, teaching classes for more than 30 years, and in addition to writing numerous non-fiction books on the subject, she edited anthology Tarot Tales (1989, with Caitlín Matthews). Some of her own stories are collected in The Tarot of Perfection: A Book of Tarot Tales (2008), and her Tarot poems in Fortune’s Lover (2009). She also authored books on women’s spirituality.
Pollack is survived by her wife, Zoe.
For more, see her entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
