Rachel Pollack, award-winning author, tarot and occult authority, trans activist, and comic-book writer who developed the first mainstream transgender superhero, has died at the age of 77.
She published seven novels and four collections of short stories as a speculative fiction novelist, including the 1980s Golden Vanity and Unquenchable Fire, which won the Arthur C Clarke Prize for science fiction in 1989. Her most recent novel, The Fissure King, came out in 2017.
Rachel Pollack Cause of death: How did Rachel Pollack die?
Her friend, author Neil Gaiman, paid Pollack a visit soon before her death in the home she shared with her wife Zoe in Rhinebeck, New York. She was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a malignancy of the lymphatic system, seven years earlier and was, according to Gaiman, drifting in and out of consciousness when he arrived.
Pollack’s death was confirmed by her wife, who shared a note on Facebook, which Gaiman tweeted.
“Rachel was a beloved writer of fantasy, but I prefer to describe her as a magical realist. She wrote these wonderful books of heightened reality and magical worlds where she would concretize metaphors.
“Rachel and I bonded over many, many things, one of which was Jewishness, and despite being a bastion of the new age she was also incredibly Jewish. There’s an orthodox prayer that begins ‘Thank you, God, for not making me a woman.’
“I remember her telling me that after she came to following her surgery she said, ‘Blessed to you God for not making me a woman, but thrice-blessed to the doctor who did.’”
