Minnie Bruce Pratt (September 12, 1946 – July 2, 2023 ) was an American poet, educator, activist, and essayist. She retired in 2015 from her position as Professor of Writing and Women's Studies at Syracuse University where she was invited to help develop the university's first LGBT studies program.

Early life and education

Pratt was born in Selma, Alabama, on September 12, 1946, and grew up in Centreville, Alabama. Her parents were Virginia Brown Pratt, a social worker, and William Luther Pratt Jr., a clerk. She graduated with a B.A. from the University of Alabama (1968) and earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1979).

Professional career

In 1977, Pratt helped to found WomanWrites, a Southeastern lesbian writers conference. While attending the University of North Carolina in 1978, she joined Feminary, a southern feminist writing collective based in Chapel Hill and Durham, North Carolina. In 1984, she co-founded LIPS, a Washington, D.C. lesbian affinity group. As the group's last public action, they participated in civil disobedience at the 1987 protest of the Bowers v. Hardwick sodomy law decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first group to be arrested at this protest. Her political affiliations included the International Action Center, the National Women's Fightback Network, and the National Writers Union; she also served as managing editor of the Workers World Party newspaper. Pratt wrote the 1990 book Crimes Against Nature, in which she described losing custody of her children because of her lesbianism. In 1991, the book won the Stonewall Book Award for Literature. Pratt wrote extensively on race, class, gender, and sexual theory. Along with lesbian writers Chrystos and Audre Lorde, she received a 1991 Hellman/Hammett award from the Fund for Free Expression to writers "who have been victimized by political persecution". Pratt appeared in Rosa von Praunheim's 1996 film, The Transexual Menace. Pratt served on the faculty of the distance education school Union Institute & University. Pratt joined Syracuse University in 2005.

Personal life

Pratt divided her time between Syracuse, New York and Centreville, Alabama. She was the widow of author-activist Leslie Feinberg, who died in November 2014 at age 65. Feinberg and Pratt married in New York and Massachusetts in 2011. Pratt had two sons, Ben and Ransom Weaver, by a previous marriage to poet Marvin E. Weaver II, which started while she attended college. In 1975, Pratt and her husband divorced in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She lost custody of her children because the state criminalized homosexual activity at the time. Pratt's children, Ben and Ransom Weaver, announced in June 2023 that Pratt had been diagnosed with a "severe health problem" and was receiving palliative care. She died in Syracuse, New York, on July 2, 2023, at the age of 76. Her New York Times obituary specified that she had suffered from glioblastoma.

Published works

Honors and awards