The cover is from William Blake’s Ancient of Days originally published in 1794 as a frontispiece for Europe a Prophecy

Reissued in March 2026, Growing Up Golem was a finalist for both a Lambda Literary Award and for the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Nonfiction Prize.

Lilith called the book “fascinating, compulsively readable, delightful… Growing Up Golem contains all the power of her earlier work, but it is written without the cloak. Tills new and important ground.” And Kirkus said, “Holds nothing back. Minkowitz brings a defiant, playful energy to writing about her difficult and dark past. Brutal introspection, clever humor, sexually explicit. Not for the prudish.”

Terry Bisson, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science fiction author, called Growing Up Golem “rich and wild, dark and funny, as fearless as her legendary journalism and as scary as a fairy tale.” And Ellis Avery called the book “startlingly fresh.… Donna Minkowitz takes a dazzling leap of fancy and then writes a new bridge into being behind her for the rest of us to follow.”

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JOIN US! for an AFTERNOON Conversation between the Author, Donna Minkowitz, and Kristen Holt-Browning. Treat yourself to some queer, fun, magical, realist literary conversation! And, if we can swing it, some beignets!

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When Donna was growing up, her mother told her and the whole family that she could do Jewish magic from the Kabbalah — and they believed her. (She was a compulsively creative and wildly domineering woman.) So Donna decided to write this memoir as though her mother really could do magic, and therefore, instead of giving birth to her, actually created her as her own personal golem servant. In Growing Up Golem, Donna is a completely fake person who somehow grows up to become a radical queer journalist for the Village Voice, but is really fooling everyone. The book is about her quest to become human.

Donna Minkowitz is a writer of memoir, fantasy, and journalism. Her memoir GROWING UP GOLEM, which Lilith magazine called “ compulsively readable.… with emotional complexity, fierce imagination and compelling prose,” will be republished in 2026 after 13 years. Her novel DONNAVILLE was praised by Chills at Will as “a master class in world-building.” Her first memoir, FEROCIOUS ROMANCE: What My Encounters with the Right Taught Me about Sex, God, and Fury, will be republished with new material in 2027. She is the winner of a Lambda Literary Award, a GLAAD Media Award, an Exceptional Merit Media Award, and The National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association’s Award for Outstanding Journalism. A former writer for the Village Voice, she lives in the Hudson Valley of New York State.

Kristen Holt-Browning is the author of the novel Ordinary Devotion, the poetry chapbook The Only Animal Awake in the House, and the forthcoming poetry collection Watershed. Originally from Stone Ridge, she lives in Beacon, New York, where she works as a freelance editor.