Donna Allegra Simms (December 8, 1953 – January 13, 2020)[1] was an American writer, dancer and electrician. She wrote poetry, short stories, and essays. Twelve of her stories were collected as Witness to the League of Blonde Hip Hop Dancers (2001).
Early life and education
Allegra was born in
Brooklyn, New York.[2] She graduated from
Tilden High School in 1970.[3] She attended
Bennington College and
Hunter College, and graduated from
New York University in 1977. Her undergraduate studies focused on dramatic literature, theatre history, and film studies.[4] "I needed them the way I needed food and shelter for survival," she wrote about the
lesbian pulp novels she read as a girl.[5][6] She recalled her parents as dismissive of her sexual identity as a "phase".[7]
Career
Allegra worked as an electrician[8] and was active in the tradeswomen movement and in
IBEW Local 3. She produced radio programs The Lesbian Show and The Velvet Sledgehammer[9] for
WBAI in the late 1970s.[4][10] She was a member of the Jemima Writers Collective, along with
Chirlane McCray and
Sapphire.[2] She wrote stories, poems, essays, and book reviews, and was a skilled dancer. Her writings were frequently anthologized,[4][11] usually alongside other Black women writers,[12] or other lesbian writers,[13][14] or other Black LGBT writers.[15] She won the
Pat Parker Memorial Poetry Prize in 1992, and was a finalist for the Violet Quill Award in 2000.[4]
As Donna Allegra Simms, she appeared briefly in two films, Cool Hands, Warm Heart (1979, short), and Born in Flames (1983, directed by
Lizzie Borden).
^
abc"Donna Allegra papers". chomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. Retrieved 2024-06-07.
^Tilden High School, Classic (1970 yearbook); via Ancestry.
"The extinction of Black women" (April 22, 1974), a WBAI radio discussion program, including Allegra, Yvonne Flowers, and Luvenia Pinson; in the Pacifica Radio Archives