Garen Drussai

Garen Lewis Drussai (June 17, 1916 — November 16, 2009) was an American science fiction and mystery writer, born Clara Hettler.

Early life

Clara Hettler was born in the Bronx, the daughter of Benjamin Hettler, a furrier, and Annie Besner Hettler. Her parents were immigrants from central Europe. In the 1970s, Garen Drussai earned a degree in English from the University of California Los Angeles.[1]

Career

Stories by Drussai included "Extra-Curricular" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1952), "Grim Fairy Tale" (Vortex, 1953), "The Closet" (Vortex, 1953), "The Twilight Years" (with Kirk Drussai, If, 1953), "Woman's Work" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1956), "Sugar Puss" (Sir! Droll Stories, 1967), and "Why Don't You Answer, Theodore?" (Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine, 1970).[2]

In "The Twilight Years", Drussai predicts the middle-class home as a site of constant marketing and advertising through appliances and the telephone.[3][4] Her science fiction stories were judged by later scholars as "galactic suburbia", for their conventional domestic settings and housewife characters.[5][6]

In 1977, a profile of Garen Drussai appeared in the Los Angeles Times, while she was working as a "hat-check girl" at a hotel. In the interview, she described her thrill when astronauts came to a dinner at the hotel in 1969: "On that night, I held the moon rock in my hand. It was an incredible feeling knowing that something that had come from the moon was touching my skin."[7]

Personal life

Garen Lewis lived in California for most of her adult life. In 1956 she was a member of the paint crew for a production of Much Ado About Nothing by the San Jose State College Department of Drama.[8] In 1993, she was living in Santa Rosa, California.[9]

She married fellow writer Kirk Drussai. They had a son named Milo born in 1949; they divorced in 1959. She died in 2009, in Santa Rosa, aged 93 years.

References
  1. "School Returnees to be Awarded Study Grants" Los Angeles Times (May 25, 1975): 278. via Newspapers.com
  2. Eric Leif Davin, Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965 (Lexington Books 2006): 380. ISBN 9780739112670
  3. "1956 - Year in SF&F: August" Sci Fi at Dark Roast Blend (July 23, 2006).
  4. Mark Bould, "The Futures Market: American Utopias", in Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link, eds., The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction (Cambridge University Press 2015): 90. ISBN 9781107052468
  5. Justine Larbalestier, The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press 2002): 178. ISBN 9780819565273
  6. Lisa Yaszek, Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women's Science Fiction (Ohio State University Press 2008). ISBN 9780814251645
  7. "Still on Job; Check Girl Hasn't Gone Way of Dodo" and "Hat Check Girl" Los Angeles Times (July 24, 1977): 514, 519. via Newspapers.com
  8. Much Ado About Nothing (program, Fall 1956 production), San Jose State College Department of Drama.
  9. Dick Phillips, "Pool Hall runs into Trouble in SR" The Press Democrat (August 14, 1993): 31. via Newspapers.com
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