Rachel Pollack

Comics Pollack wrote for the comic book Doom Patrol, on DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, from 1993 to 1995. Her run of issues (64–87) was a continuation of a 1960s comic which had recently become a cult favorite under Grant Morrison. Pollack took over the series in 1993 after meeting editor Tom Peyer at a party, telling him it was the only monthly comic book she would want to write at the time, and sending him a sample script. Towards the end of Morrison's run, Pollack began writing monthly "letters to the editor" in what she describes as a "gee-whiz fangirl" voice asking to take over the book when Morrison was finished. In the final letter, she claims that she had already told her mother that she had been given the job. Peyer then used that response to that letter to officially announce that Pollack was, in fact, taking over the book.

During her tenure, Pollack dealt with such rarely addressed comic book topics as menstruation, sexual identity, and transgender issues. Her run ended two years later, with the book's cancellation.

In addition to Doom Patrol, Pollack wrote issues of the Vertigo Visions anthology featuring Brother Power the Geek (1993) and Tomahawk (1998), the first 11 issues of the fourth volume of New Gods (1995), and the five-issue limited series Time Breakers (1996) for the short lived Helix imprint.

In 2019, it was announced that Pollack was reuniting with Doom Patrol artist Richard Case and letterer John Workman to create a short story—titled "Snake Song"—for the Kickstarter funded "music-themed horror anthology" Dead Beats.

In 2024, DC Comics published "DC Pride: A Celebration of Rachel Pollack" reprinting issue 70 of "Doom Patrol" and issue 1 of "Vertigo Visions: The Geek #1 'Homelands of the Dolls'" as well as an introductory tribute by Stuart Moore and a new story, "Shining Through the Wreckage" revisiting Pollack's Doom Patrol character Coagula written by Joe Corallo.

Fiction Three of Pollack's novels won or were nominated for major awards in the science fiction and fantasy field: Unquenchable Fire won the 1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award; Godmother Night won the 1997 World Fantasy Award, was shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature; while Temporary Agency was nominated for the 1995 Nebula Award and the Mythopoeic Award, and shortlisted for the Tiptree.

Her magical realism novels explore worlds imbued with elements pulled from a number of traditions, faiths, and religions. Several of her novels are set in an alternative reality that resembles modern America, but an America of Bright Beings, where magic and ritual, religion and thaumaturgy are the norms.

Her short work "Burning Beard: The Dreams and Visions of Joseph ben Jacob, Lord Viceroy of Egypt" was published in 2007 in the anthology Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Theodora Goss and Delia Sherman. It was reprinted online in Lightspeed in May 2014.

Nonfiction Pollack's book The Body of the Goddess is an exploration of the history of the Goddess and her relation to locality and landscape. Pollack uses the image of the Goddess in many of her works.

Teaching For 32 years, Pollack taught seminars with tarot author Mary K. Greer at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, in Rhinebeck, New York. She also did seminars for several years in California in conjunction with Greer, and she co-presented a breakthrough seminar with author Johanna Gargiulo-Sherman on tarot and psychic ability, using her own Shining Tribe Tarot and Gargiulo-Sherman's Sacred Rose Tarot. Pollack was also a popular lecturer at tarot seminars and symposiums such as Los Angeles Tarot Symposium, Bay Area Tarot Symposium, and the Readers Studio. She taught English at State University of New York.

Influences Pollack was Jewish, and frequently wrote about the Kabbalah, most notably in The Kabbalah Tree. In Doom Patrol she introduced Coagula, a trans lesbian character. She also wrote several essays on transness, attacking the notion that it is a "sickness", instead saying that it is a passion. She emphasized the revelatory aspects of transness, saying that "the woman sacrifices her social identity as a male, her personal history, and finally the very shape of her body to a knowledge, a desire, which overpowers all rational understanding and proof."

A Secret Woman features a police detective who is transgender and Jewish. The detective utters the prayer, "Blessed art thou oh G-d who made me not a woman. Double blessed is Doctor Green who has." Pollack created the characters known as 'the bandage people' for her Doom Patrol run.

Fairy tales such as the Brothers Grimm influenced many of Pollack's writings. Her book Tarot of Perfection is a book of fairy tales based on the tarot.

Personal life In July 2022, Pollack revealed via Facebook that, after seemingly overcoming Hodgkin lymphoma several years earlier, she had been diagnosed with a different variant of lymphoma and would be undergoing chemotherapy. In August, Pollack's wife Zoe Matoff and Patricia Nolan announced that Pollack was in an intensive care unit and started a GoFundMe fundraiser for her medical expenses. Those who shared the fundraiser on Twitter included Neil Gaiman, Shelly Bond, Gail Simone, and DC Comics editors Chris Conroy and Andrea Shay, while prominent donors included Rachel Gold, Al Ewing, Kieron Gillen, Kim Newman, Brett Booth, and Cliff Chiang, ultimately raising over $28,000 against a $15,000 goal by September.

Pollack died from Hodgkin lymphoma on April 7, 2023, at the age of 77.

Awards and memberships 1997 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel winner for Godmother Night 1994 Nebula Award for Best Novel nominee for Temporary Agency 1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award winner for Unquenchable Fire Certified Tarot Grand Master (CTGM) with the Tarot Certification Board of America Tarot Sage (TS) with the American Board For Tarot Certification

Collections

Anthologies

Short fiction

Poetry

The Wild Cows (1993) Fortune's Lover (May 2009). A Midsummer Night's Press Tyrant Oedipus (2012), with David Vine. EyeCorner Press

Essays "Introduction: A Machine for Constructing Stories" (1989) Read This (The New York Review of Science Fiction, October 1991) (1991) Read This (The New York Review of Science Fiction, July 1995) (1995) Read This (The New York Review of Science Fiction, August 1996) (1996)

Reviews The Book of Embraces (1991) by Eduardo Galeano Outside the Dog Museum (1992) by Jonathan Carroll Coelestis [vt Celestis] (1996) by Paul Park

Comics