Famed Oakland novelist and lesbian activist Elana Dykewomon dies minutes before start of first play

Dykewomon's death from cancer Sunday comes as the Bay Area Playwrights Festival presented her play about her late partner's struggle and death from Lewy body dementia.

Elana Dykewomon, the trailblazing lesbian writer and activist, died at her Oakland home Sunday, just 20 minutes before the start of a staged reading of her first play, a moving account of her struggle to care for her longtime partner who died of dementia nearly six years earlier.

Dykewomon, 72, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in September, her brother, Dan Nachman said. In recent weeks, she continued to work via Zoom with the director and cast of “How to Let Your Lover Die” to prepare it for its inclusion in the annual Bay Area Playwrights Festival, an annual event that showcases new works.

In COVID-19-era fashion, the actors performed remotely with Dykewomon dying just before the play began to stream. Viewers received the bittersweet news of her passing in the form of a message posted by her cousin, Jennifer Brier, in a live chat that accompanied the play. Tributes immediately began to pour in, via the chat or on social media, in what amounted to an online version of a triumphant curtain call.

“I know Elana was so excited about having this play in the world and about these performances,” said Brier, her literary executor. “I like to imagine that she knew we were all gathered to hear her words and watch the amazing performance. This allowed her to finally let go. At her heart, Elana was a poet and yesterday was truly poetic.”

Dykewomon’s play forthrightly depicts her relationship with her late partner, Susan Levinkind, as she was dying in 2016 of Lewy body dementia, the progressive dementia that afflicted Robin Williams. Dykewomon’s character wrestles with fear, exhaustion, grief and end-of-life questions about assisted suicide, as she watches her lover succumb to a devastating disorder.

Nachman said he and others in his sister’s inner circle, who were with her in her final moments, logged on to watch after she died. “It was tough,” Nachman said. “But we wanted to see what she had created.”

Dykewomon may not be widely known to the general public, but she was a central figure in lesbian literature, history and activism of the late 20th century, said Brier, who also directs the gender and women’s studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Born in New York City in 1949, Dykewomon was 24 when she published her debut novel, “Riverfinger Women,” in 1974, a coming-of-age story about lesbian life during the social upheaval of that era. As a pre-teenager in the early 1960s, Dykewomon, then known as Elana Nachman, attempted suicide and was hospitalized. She knew she was somehow different but was told by doctors she couldn’t possibly “be homosexual,” as she wrote in an essay included in the 2017 anthology, “Dispatches from Lesbian America.”

Always brilliant and “militant” from a young age, Dykewomon came out at her progressive boarding school, her brother said. Shortly after “Riverfinger Women” was published, she chose to no longer use Nachman as her last name because she didn’t want to be defined by men, she wrote in the essay. “I chose ‘dyke’ for the power, and ‘womon’ for the alliance,” she wrote.

“Riverfinger Women” is on the New York Times list of 100 Greatest Gay Novels, and her historical novel, “Beyond the Pale,” about Russian Jewish lesbians immigrating to America at the turn of the 20th century, won the 1998 Lamda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. Her poetry, essays and other works address themes of “lesbian love, Jewishness and identity, being butch, fat oppression, mental illness and incarceration,” a statement from her friends and family read.

In May, she was officially named a “trailblazer” by the Golden Crown Literary Society, which said her prose depicted “the lives of women and lesbians, both contemporary and historical, allowing us to see our stories on the page long before those stories were widely available.”

Many also remember Dykewomon as the longtime editor of Sinister Wisdom, the influential literary and art journal that was previously edited by Adrienne Rich, as well as classes she taught at San Francisco State for more than 15 years.

“She taught legions of students, was generous with her editorial mentorship, and she shaped lots and lots of writers,” Brier said. Among writers influenced by Dykewomon is Giovanna Capone, who co-edited “Dispatches from Lesbian America” and who eventually became Dykewomon’s neighbor in the East Oakland enclave that is home to other LGBTQ artists and writers.

Capone said she first read “Riverfinger Women” in college in upstate New York. “I remember highlighting different passages,” Capone said. “It helped me come out. Who would have known that 40 years later I’d be living across the street from her?”

On their Oakland block, Dykewomon was known for her purple-painted house and for walking her little dog, Alice B. Toklas, Capone said. She and Levinkind, a retired attorney, shared the house, as well as a commitment to promoting lesbian visibility and other causes.

When Levinkind died, Dykewomon wrote, “Mourning is the most difficult form of celebration, but I am filled with the beauty of what I need to mourn.” In telling their love story, she decided to write her first play, an adventure and challenge even for an experienced writer, Brier said.

“It was hard to write about Susan’s death, even as it was cathartic,” Brier said. “I can only imagine how much that changed as Elana was looking at her own death.”

After learning she had cancer, Dykewomon received help from her “chosen family,” the “awesome” community of women “who reflected the life she made for herself,” her friends said. She also wrote on Facebook:  “I have had a lucky, full, wonderful life. It is highly possible I may recover but I am content either way.”

A memorial for Dykewomon is being planned for September. More information is forthcoming.

Staff photographer Jane Tyska contributed to this report.