A reading and conversation about transition with local award-winning author Lucy Sante

“Changing genders was a strange and electric idea that had lived somewhere in the recesses of my mind for the better part of my 67 years,” said Lucy Sante, in an article she wrote for Vanity Fair in 2022 in which she described the process of her transition from Luc Sante. “My desire to live as a woman, I could see now, was a coherent phenomenon, consistently just under the surface of my nominal life for all those decades, despite my best efforts to pretend it wasn’t there.”

Sante, born in Verviers, Belgium, lived in New York City for 30 years, and now lives locally. She is the author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, Folk Photography, The Other Paris, Maybe the People Would Be the Times, and Nineteen Reservoirs, and editor and translator of Novels in Three Lines. Her memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name will be published by Penguin in February. Her awards include a Whiting Writers Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Grammy (for album notes), an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, and Guggenheim and Cullman fellowships. She taught in Columbia University’s MFA writing programs and recently retired after 24 years teaching writing and the history of photography at Bard College.

This event is presented by “Prosendale,” launched on March 9 of this year, at Rosendale Theatre with the first in a series of literary programs, “Memoir readings by local authors for Women’s History Month.” This, the second event will take place, 2 p.m. Saturday, June 24, at the Rosendale Theatre, 408 Main St., Rosendale to celebrate Pride Month. Considering the recent increase in attention to transgender issues, unfortunately with an explosion of anti-trans legislation in some areas of the country and as an increase in violence against trans individuals, the producer of the “Prosendale” series decided that a thoughtful and sensitive program about transgender issues could offer the public a deeper understanding of these issues with hopefully, an increase in compassion and a decrease in fear and prejudice. It was with this goal in mind that Joyce Sprafkin, Ph.D., a retired clinical psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry from Stony Brook Medical School, invited Lucy Sante to be honored as the sole author to be featured at this “Prosendale” event for Pride Month.

Sante will read an excerpt from, “On Becoming Lucy Sante,” which was published in January 2022 in Vanity Fair. There will then be a conversation between her and Professor Jason S. Wrench, the current editor of the Journal of Intercultural Communication Research for the World Communication Association and professor in the Department of Communication at SUNY New Paltz.

“I’m deeply disturbed by legislative backlash I’m seeing against the trans community in our country today,” said Wrench. “Hearing Lucy’s story breaks down these walls of misunderstanding and fear.”

This event, sponsored by The Golden Notebook in Woodstock, will be selling copies of Sante's most recent book, Nineteen Reservoirs.

Tickets are $12/$10 members. For more information, visit rosendaletheatre.org or call 845-658-8989.