 |
What people are saying about Tania Katan's writing
Melissa Etheridge
"This book rocks! My One-Night Stand With Cancer is playful, passionate and downright beautiful." by Melissa Etheridge
Library Journal
* A Starred Review "It is one of the best cancer memoirs I have ever read. I love her warmth, her raunch, her spit-in-your-face
honesty. Any woman who has been diagnosed will recognize Katan as the real deal." by Bette-Lee Fox
Booklist
"Katan, shown naked above the waist in her back-of-the-book photo, sacrificed a breast to stage three cancer at 21. The
disease recurred 10 years later, but she survived to prove, perhaps, that laughter is in fact the best medicine. In any event,
the Jewish lesbian's memoir is loaded with humor. When a girlfriend found a lump on her breast, Katan calmed her nerves at
the breast clinic by pretending she was a rock star and completing the intake form by indicating lesbian sex as her preferred
form of birth control. By alternating, during a description of an ultrasound, between her real past as an impoverished, 16-year-old,
dateless, friendless "drama fag" who wrote standup and fantasies of her present self as a lesbo porn star, Katan establishes
a then-and-now structure for insights infused with wry comedy: remarks like "toxic girlfriends give me cancer" and characters
including hypochondriac Nurse Fred, who fears those who lick books. With lymph nodes negative and outlook positive despite
lightning striking twice, this 10K runner shows great spirit and strength." by Whitney Scott
Jill Dolan author of Utopia in Performance
"I marveled not only at Tania's sense of humor, but her ability to carry it through in both the living and the telling
of her story, in a way that wasn't catty or sarcastic or overly wry, but that was appropriately ironic yet still earnest and,
if you will, hopeful." by Jill Dolan
BIO
Tania Katan is an author, playwright and performer. Her memoir My
One-Night Stand With Cancer is the winner of the 2006 Judy Grahn Award in Nonfiction, an honoree of the 2006 American Library
Association’s Stonewall Book Award in Non-Fiction, and a finalist for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award. Since the success
of her first book, Tania has been performing her one-woman show, Saving Tania’s Privates (adapted from My One Night
Stand With Cancer), which made its European premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2008 where it was a critical
success! In the U.S. Saving Tania’s Privates has been seen at such prestigious venues as ACT in Seattle and The Painted
Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. Katan is a regular contributor to The Advocate, Compete Magazine, Stand Up To Cancer’s
online magazine, and others. And because of her unique ability to write and perform she has become a regular performer at
Comedy Central’s Sit-n-Spin. As a public speaker and teacher, Tania is invited to teach writing workshops and give performance-style
lectures around the world. Most recently Katan was in Iceland teaching a “Performing for the Camera” workshop
as part of the Iceland 700.is Experimental Film and Video Festival. She is a regular on the university circuit, speaking at
Loyola Marymount, UC Berkeley, University of Connecticut, California College of Arts, Arizona State University, and others.
At writing conferences she is seen on panels with Brett Paesel, Bernard Cooper, Laurie Notaro, Steve Almond, and Lee Gutkind.
As a playwright, Tania’s plays have been seen at Connecticut Repertory Theatre, Circle Repertory Theatre, Pacific Residence
Theatre, Theatre of N.O.T.E., and other venues throughout the United States. Katan has received the American College Theatre
Festival Award in Playwriting, the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, and others. Katan’s work has been written about
in The New York Times, Bust, Library Journal, Running Times, DIVA, GCN Ireland, The Scotsman, and other national and international
publications. In addition to writing and performing, Tania is extremely proud to be a graduate of the New York Artist in Residence
program at the Creative Center, an organization that brings the art making process to the bedsides of people in the hospital
dealing with cancer. Oh, and Tania's a really great time at a cocktail party!
|
