Renate Stendhal

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Renate Stendhal

Born
Germany
Occupation Writer, Counselor, Writing Coach
Nationality German
Genres Fiction, non-fiction
Subjects Feminism, Women, Eroticism, Children's literature
Official website

Renate Stendhal (born 1944) is a Lambda Literary Award-winning writer, counselor and writing coach. Born in Germany, she spent half of her adult life in Paris and the other half in California (first in Berkeley, now in Pt. Reyes Station) where she works in private practice.

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[edit] Biography

During her school years in Berlin and Hamburg, Renate Stendhal pursued studies of music, singing, painting, and dancing. She majored in literature at Hamburg University, then moved to Paris in 1966 to focus on classical dance. After an engagement at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, she returned to Paris in 1970 and joined an experimental theater group. From 1975 to 1982, she worked in Paris as a cultural correspondent for German radio and press (Frankfurter Rundschau et al.) – an occupation she picked up again in 2005, writing cultural reviews for the international magazine Scene4 [1]. In Paris, she also worked for many years as a personal assistant for surrealist painter Meret Oppenheim.

With the beginning of the French and German feminist movements, Renate Stendhal became an activist and co-created (with Danish painter Maj Skadegaard) the first feminist multimedia show in Europe, “In the Beginning . . . of the End: A Voyage of Women Becoming” (1980). A year later, the show was recorded on film by Studio D of the Canadian Film Board and shown at women's festivals and international film festivals. While touring with the film, Renate Stendhal started giving workshops, lecturing on women's creative and erotic empowerment. Her essays and articles appeared in major feminist magazines including Feministische Studien and Emma.

During the eighties, she became the first German translator of feminist authors Susan Griffin, Audre Lord, Adrienne Rich, and others. In 1984, she accompanied Audre Lorde as a translator on a reading tour of Germany and Switzerland. She translated Gertude Stein's only mystery novel, Blood on the Dining-Room Floor, into German, and in 1989 created a photobiograhy with parallel visual and textual readings of Stein's life, Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures. The English edition (Algonquin Books, 1994) earned a Lambda Award.

Since her move to California in 1986, Renate Stendhal earned a degree in clinical psychology and became a counselor. Simultaneously, she began building up a private practice as an editor and writing coach. In 2002, having finished her Ph.D. in psychology, she became a provost at UIL (University of Integrative Learning), guiding students through MA and Ph.D. programs that reward students for their life-long learning. Her own experience as a learner and now provost of UIL is captured in: "Harvesting Life." [2] [3]

In the States, Renate Stendhal published Sex and Other Sacred Games (Times Books, 1989), co-authored with Kim Chernin, Ph.D. with whom she also co-authored the portrait of a young opera singer, Cecilia Bartoli: The Passion of Song (HarperCollins, 1997). She wrote and illustrated a novel for young adults, The Grasshopper's Secret: A Magical Tale (EdgeWork Books, 2002), and continued her reflections on women's psychology and eros with True Secrets of Lesbian Desire: Keeping Sex Alive in Long-Term Relationships (North Atlantic Books, 2003), originally published as Love's Learning Place: Truth as Aphrodisiac in Women's Long-Term Relationships (EdgeWork Books, 2002).


[edit] References

  1. ^ Scene4 Magazine - Arts and Media February 2008
  2. ^ Renate Stendhal - Writing Coach, Editor, Spiritual and Psychological Counselor, G/L Counselor
  3. ^ AIWP - Association for the Integration of the Whole Person

[edit] Books

  • Sex and Other Sacred Games (1989)
  • Gertrude Stein: In Words and Pictures (1989)
  • Cecilia Bartoli: The Passion of Song (1997)
  • The Grasshopper's Secret: A Magical Tale (2002)
  • True Secrets of Lesbian Desire: Keeping Sex Alive in Long-Term Relationships (2003)

[edit] External Links

Renate Stendhal's personal website University for Integrative Learning


[edit] Selected articles by Renate Stendhal