Rachel Grace Pollack was an American science fiction author, comic book writer, and expert on divinatory tarot.
Early life and education
Pollack was born on August 17, 1945, in Brooklyn, New York. She earned an honours degree in English from New York University and a master's in English from Claremont Graduate University.
Career
Tarot reading
Pollack wrote the 1985 book Salvador Dali's Tarot, an exposition of Salvador Dalí's Tarot deck, comprising a full-page color plate for each card, with her commentary on the facing page. Her work 78 Degrees of Wisdom on Tarot reading is commonly referenced by Tarot readers. She created her own Tarot deck, Shining Woman Tarot (later Shining Tribe Tarot). She also aided in the creation of the Vertigo Tarot Deck with illustrator Dave McKean and author Neil Gaiman, and she wrote a book to accompany it. Gaiman sometimes consulted Pollack on the tarot for his stories.
Comics
Pollack wrote for the comic book Doom Patrol, on DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, from 1993 to 1995. Her run of issues (64–87) was a continuation of a 1960s comic which had recently become a cult favorite under Grant Morrison. Pollack took over the series in 1993 after meeting editor Tom Peyer at a party, telling him it was the only monthly comic book she would want to write at the time, and sending him a sample script. Towards the end of Morrison's run, Pollack began writing monthly "letters to the editor" in what she describes as a "gee-whiz fangirl" voice asking to take over the book when Morrison was finished. In the final letter, she claims that she had already told her mother that she had been given the job. Peyer then used that response to that letter to officially announce that Pollack was, in fact, taking over the book. As a result of these letters being printed in the letter column of Doom Patrol issues, some people seem to believe that the letters are the way she actually got the job.
During her tenure, Pollack dealt with such rarely addressed comic book topics as menstruation, sexual identity, and transsexuality. Her run ended two years later, with the book's cancellation.
In addition to Doom Patrol, Pollack wrote issues of the Vertigo Visions anthology featuring Brother Power the Geek (1993) and Tomahawk (1998), the first 11 issues of the fourth volume of New Gods (1995), and the five-issue limited series Time Breakers (1996) for the short lived Helix imprint.
In 2019, it was announced that Pollack was reuniting with Doom Patrol artist Richard Case and letterer John Workman to create a short story—titled "Snake Song"—for the Kickstarter funded "music-themed horror anthology" Dead Beats.
Fiction
Three of Pollack's novels won or were nominated for major awards in the science fiction and fantasy field: Unquenchable Fire won the 1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award; Godmother Night won the 1997 World Fantasy Award, was shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature; while Temporary Agency was nominated for the 1995 Nebula Award and the Mythopoeic Award, and shortlisted for the Tiptree.
Her magical realism novels explore worlds imbued with elements pulled from a number of traditions, faiths, and religions. Several of her novels are set in an alternative reality that resembles modern America, but an America of Bright Beings, where magic and ritual, religion and thaumaturgy are the norms.
Her short work "Burning Beard: The Dreams and Visions of Joseph ben Jacob, Lord Viceroy of Egypt" was published in 2007 in the anthology Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Theodora Goss and Delia Sherman. It was reprinted online in Lightspeed Magazine in May 2014.
Nonfiction
Pollack's book The Body of the Goddess is an exploration of the history of the Goddess and her relation to locality and landscape. Pollack uses the image of the Goddess in many of her works.
Teaching
For 32 years, Pollack taught seminars with tarot author Mary K. Greer at the Omega Institute, in Rhinebeck, New York. She also did seminars for several years in California in conjunction with Greer, and she co-presented a breakthrough seminar with author Johanna Gargiulo-Sherman on tarot and psychic ability, using her own Shining Tribe Tarot and Gargiulo-Sherman's Sacred Rose Tarot. Pollack was also a popular lecturer at tarot seminars and symposiums such as Los Angeles Tarot Symposium, Bay Area Tarot Symposium, and the Readers Studio.
She was a professor of creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts program of Goddard College. She taught English at State University of New York.