Judith Kitchen: Despite Body, With Body
peacefully, in her sleep, 11/6/2014
As a person who talks to dead people and who has tended toward disembodiment herself, I have some different words to add to the celebration and mourning pouring out for Judith Kitchen --
- Wife, mother, grandmother.
- Cofounder, with her husband, poet Stan Sanvel Rubin, of the Rainier Writing Workshop (the MFA program from which I graduated).
- Writer in every genre, with a style both limpidly readable and fiercely intelligent.
- Superbly influential critic, mentor, editor
- Supernaturally gifted "matchmaker" of mentors and students, and so inaugurator of many valuable and productive literary relationships
- Founder of Ovenbird Press; champion of fine writing in a changing literary culture
- Someone who never suffered folly gladly, but who never made a fool out of anyone