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My Blue Coiling Snake, My Empty Room
a novel by
Lynn Crawford
Lynn Crawford's powerful and deeply affecting novel records a love affair that begins in Detroit and concludes in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS epidemic. It recreates in closely observed detail a gay couple's experience during a perilous time, when love is threatened by homophobia in Detroit and a pandemic in the City by the Bay. Yet it also transcends time and place to explore profound issues of love and grief and forgiveness. Written in prose that is both
resonant and precise, My Blue Coiling Snake, My Empty Room is the work of a gifted artist who creates unforgettable characters and confronts with unwavering courage the existential questions that all of us face. It is at once unsparing in its details, yet compassionate in its embrace of the bare, forked animal that is humankind.
~ Claude Summers, Stirton Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, University of Michigan-Dearborn
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A brave and beautifully written story of love and loss, rendering an insightful and compassionate portrait of San Francisco in the time of AIDS, a tale that is especially relevant in so many ways now.
~ Susan Griffin. Author, A Chorus of Stones
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My Blue Coiling Snake, My Empty Room is a true work of art, and is as absorbing as it is emotionally wrenching. Exploring issues of vulnerability, loss, and what it means to love without conditions, this is the kind of book that leaves an indelible mark on your soul.
~ Doran Hunter, Publisher, Opening Mind Press
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Lynn Crawford was born and grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, where she began writing, drawing and painting. She went to Henry Ford Community College and then transferred to the University of Michigan - Dearborn where she was the editor of the school newspaper and literary arts journal and earned a B.A. in English with honors. In the mid-1970s she "ran away with the circus" Theatre Group of Ann Arbor. In Ann Arbor, she continued writing, attended social work school, met her long-time partner, Ellen Leonard, and began her practice as a clinical social worker.
In 1984 she moved to San Francisco where she died in 2017. In San Francisco, Lynn maintained a private psychotherapy practice for over thirty years. She also worked for the Asociación de Mujeres de El Salvador where a film of her poem "A Woman in El Salvador Speaking" spoken by Carolyn Forché was made. Lynn worked at the mulitcultural Iris Project of the Women's Institute for Mental Health and volunteered teaching and supervising student interns at the groundbreaking LGBTQI mental health center known first as Operation Concern and later as New Leaf.
Her writing has been published in Sinister Wisdom, The Bay Guardian, Inquiring Mind and Tricycle.
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