Name Tammy Stoner | Education Antioch University | |
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Tammy Lynne Stoner (born October 26, 1968 in Midland, Texas) is genre blending, American writer and artist. She created the first children's program for kids in gay families, "Dottie's Magic Pockets", is the Publisher of Gertrude Press, and is the author of Sugar Land (Red Hen Press, 2018). She lives between Portland, OR and San Francisco, CA with her wife and three kids.
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Personal life
Stoner was born in Midland, Texas and lived in El Paso, Texas and Gulfport, Mississippi before her family settled in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. After attending twelve years of Catholic school, she left for West Chester University, where she met the woman she would marry 20 years later.
Stoner put herself through college at Temple University by working as an artists’ model, a paid medical experimentee, a waitress at a Greek diner, a house cleaner, a biscuit maker, and a book store manager. While in Philadelphia, she started Shrink-Wrap literary and art journal with her boyfriend, was published several times, and played in a band who practiced secretly at the Mummers Museum. After graduation, she moved from Philadelphia to Austin, Texas where she worked as a gas station attendant and in print production.
In 1995, Stoner moved to South Korea. She taught English in Pusan for a year before resettling in the Tenderloin in San Francisco in 1996. The following year she moved to Southern California where she lived for ten years, working as a print production manager at Liberation Publications, parent company of the Advocate, Out magazine, HIV+, and Alyson Books until she left to have a baby with her girlfriend. Her pregnancy led to the final break with her religious parents.
In 2007, Stoner earned her MFA from Antioch University. That same year, Stoner split amicably from her girlfriend. They then moved to Portland, OR with their son. In 2008, Stoner reunited with her college girlfriend, Karena Meehan, who was living in Paris. Meehan moved to Portland to be with Stoner. Three years later they were married. They had twin girls in 2014 and now live between Portland and San Francisco.
Creative Work
In 2006, Stoner's son asked her why no families on kids' TV had two mommies, inspiring Stoner to create "Dottie's Magic Pockets". Dottie was directed by her friend from Sony Pictures, Andrea Maxwell, and stars Jennifer Plante. It was released in 2007 to much media buzz and played at numerous gay and lesbian film festivals including London, Melbourne, Toronto, Outfest, and Frameline. Now, Dottie is in 100+ libraries in the United States and Canada.
From 2011-2014, Stoner was the Fiction Editor for Gertrude Journal, based in Portland, OR, a queer literary and arts journal, and took over as Publisher in 2017. Stoner also wrote several produced short films and in 2013, she was on the writing staff for "Second Shot", starring Jill Bennett.
Stoner's literary writing has appeared in the Portland Review, Literary Orphans, Unshod Quills, 10,000 Pounds of Black Ink, Folio, and PIf Magazine, among others. In 2011, she was nominated for a Million Writers Award. In 2012 she was offered a fellowship to the Summer Literary Seminar in Kenya. Her work has been included in anthologies by Forest Avenue Press (2013) and New Rivers Press (2015). In 2018, her first novel will be released by Red Hen Press.
Stoner is a member of The Guttery writing group, alongside Mo Daviau, Tracy Manaster, Jamie Duclos-Yourdon, Susan DeFreitas, and A. Molotkov, among others.