Starhawk

Starhawk was born as Miriam Simos in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Both her parents were the children of Jewish immigrants from Russia. In 1973, while she was a film student at UCLA, Starhawk won the Samuel Goldwyn Award for her novel, "A Weight of Gold", a story about Venice, California, where she then lived. 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. Starhawk has authored 10 books, which have have been translated into over 11 languages. Her essays are reprinted across the world, and have been included in numerous anthologies. Her book "Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery" won the Media Alliance Meritorious Achievement Award for non-fiction in 1988. Her first novel, "The Fifth Sacred Thing", won the Lambda Award for best Gay and Lesbian Science Fiction in 1994. Her non-fiction book "Webs of Power" won a 2003 Nautilus Award. Starhawk appeared in and consulted on to the popular trio of films known as the Women's Spirituality Series, directed by Donna Read for the National Film Board of Canada: "Goddess Remembered" (1989), "The Burning Times" (1990), and "Full Circle" (1993). Starhawk and Donna Read recently formed their own film company, Belili Productions. Their first release was "Signs Out of Time" in 2004, a documentary on the life of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas. They released their second film "Permaculture: The Growing Edge" in 2010. Starhawk has also made several short documentaries which can be found on YouTube: "The Spiral Dance Ritual", "Reclaiming's Spiral Dance: Three Decades of Magic", "Permaculture in the City" and "Permaculture: Principles at Work."