Renegade. Dancer. Writer.

Dance is my religion. My stories are its bible.

Forthcoming is my novel about a tomboy growing up in Oakland, California during the 1970s. In it, stories about a mother, a Greek chorus, a blue bull, boys, and the cantankerous protagonist Spike, who fights with them all.

Vida Felsenfeld was born in Berkeley, California and raised in Oakland along with her 11 siblings. She attended Catholic school, graduated college at 40, and at age 66, received her master’s degree in creative writing (fiction). She is currently working on a novel about growing up in Oakland during the 1960s and 70s, and continues to study flamenco dance.    

Originally a poet, her poems have been published in Rag Zine, an Art and Literary Zine, Berkeley Times Fifth Annual Poetry Edition, Penumbra Art & Literary Annual, and Milvia Street Art & Literary Journals. She’s been a featured reader at various Bay Area literary events, including poetry reading at Eves at The Beat Museum, the Berkeley Annual Poetry Festival, Alameda Island Poets, Lyrics and Dirges, Alley Cat Bookstore & Gallery San Francisco, and the Milvia Street Annual Poetry Book Celebration. She has performed her Rock the Dot Project: Poetry/Flamenco dance pieces at Broad Statements: Perspectives on Womxnhood, the Berkeley Annual Poetry Festival, La Misión Flamenca and the Melissa Cruz Student showcases, Deadication I and II. Publication in fiction is forthcoming. 

On Writing:

“He[she]not busy being born, is busy dying.” Bob Dylan

I believe raw emotional stories begging to be told, are strangled beneath safe ones that make the page. My intention is to write tales that strike a nerve, paralyze, and expose the human condition. It is to tell the truth with the purpose of generating an emotional response from my readers.

On Dance:  

Duende is the “…constant baptism of newly created things.” Federico García Lorca

Flamenco dance invites me to enter that liminal space of Duende, where death of the intellect, and birth of the uninhibited take place. 

Contact Vida Felsenfeld: rockthedot???