My True Stories: Artista, Brenda Frazer
Book Specifications:
105 Pages
210 mm x 130 mm x 7 mm
Perfect Bound
Print run of 100
Publication Date: 15.05.23
ISBN: 978-1-7399499-6-9
£15.00
Credits:
Design: Lucy Wilkinson
Front cover artwork: Beth Wilkinson
Editors and contributors: Lucy Wilkinson, Heike Mlakar and Timothy Coster
Printed and bound at Dean Print, Stockport, UK
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As part of the My True Stories collection, Brenda Frazer recounts the true story of a woman on the road (1967-1970), beginning her journey from the Beat poetry scene of New York City to Guatemala. Fleeing the drug-infused New York City Beat scene, Frazer arrives in Guatemala with her husband Ray Bremser and their daughter, Georgia. Artista was originally a large manuscript that combined Drug City. Frazer accompanies the reader from New York City’s flourishing Beat poetry scene to Mexican flashbacks. Artista is a significant contribution to the female experience during the time of cultural and social transformations of the 1960s.
Including an introduction by Heike Mlakar
Further reading:
My True Stories collection: Poets and Odd Fellows, Drug City, Artista, Cherry Valley Ballads and Stories. You can also purchase a limited edition collection of all 4 books in a slipcase here. We will be republishing Some American Tales in the summer of 2023. I also recommend Troia: Mexican Memoirs published by Dalkey Archives Press in 2002 now called Deep Vellum.
Reviews/Press:
'Finally Brought to Light: Brenda Frazer’s My True Stories' (2022) by Heike Mlakar in Beat News.
Interview with Brenda Frazer by Nancy Grace
'Brenda Frazer' (2022) by Peter Hale (Allen Ginsberg Project)
'Brenda Frazer's My True Stories' (2023) by Dawn Swoop in Beat Scene
Biography
Brenda Frazer published her first book Troia in 1966. She has also appeared in The Portable Beat Reader (edited by Ann Charters, ) and A Different Beat (Richard Peabody), as well as multiple periodicals from the 1950s and 60s such as Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts and Blue Beat. She was married to the poet Ray Bremser. She lived in New York City during the late 1950s and 60s and moved to Cherry Valley in New York in 1970, living at The Committee set up by Allen Ginsberg for poets, writers and artists to live communally. In 2020, death of workers whilst building skyscrapers published Some American Tales.
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