ROBERTA DEGNORE
Roberta Degnore is an American author, filmmaker, psychologist, and educator.
She wrote novels under numerous pen names before pursuing graduate studies in psychology and filmmaking.
A lifelong solo traveler, she's a modern explorer.
Roberta currently teaches an innovative course she developed at FIT: The Psychology of Gender, Perception, and Self-Expression in Fashion.
NOMINATED FOR THE
LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD
‘Invisible Soft Return:\'
Kirkus Reviews
'Invisible Soft Return:\'
Hal Ackerman
Author of 'Stein, Stoned; Stein, Stung'; 'Write Screenplays That Sell: The Ackerman Way'
PRAISE & REVIEWS
‘Until You See Me’
Kirkus Reviews
‘Until You See Me”
Michael Tolkin
Author of 'Ray Donavan' &
'The Player'
“This classic underground lesbian sex novel from the 1980s is finally reissued! A day-to-day recounting of emotional and sexual risks in the Downtown dyke scene, surrounded by the explosion of AIDS and the implosion of the maverick art world. Degnore was there and knows of what she speaks. A record of a disappeared world with no rules bu desire.”
'The Assistance of Vice'
Sarah Schulman
Author of 'Let the Record Show'
Playwrite of 'The Lady Hamlet'
FILMS
"I’ve been privileged to have my films screened in forty-four festivals worldwide. There’s nothing like it. Crazy, fun, nerve-wracking and more gratifying than I can describe."
F*STOP (2004)
-
Cinque Giorni Per Conoscersi, Rome (a curated “best of” festival)
-
(2004-2007) 43 festivals worldwide, including Palm Springs, Frameline 28, Outfest,
NewFest, Big Bear, Breckenridge, Paris, Berlin, Perth, Tokyo, Bologna... -
(2004) WGA/West: Writer/Director, The Gay Scene
Actors: Nia Vardalos, Emily Cline, Helen Wassell, DC Douglas, Harriet Harris
When sex, drugs and rock & roll don’t work anymore, Cyanne opens her eyes to her art – finally.
-
(2008) IMDB special invitation to screen full film on site
Mockumentary exposing the beauty secret that dare not speak its name: Electrolysis. Ouch!
Heatbeat
A moving abstract painting: hot, molten, primitive. It's not just about making glass.
-
(1993) Ann Arbor Film Festival, MI
Glass Art Society Conference, NY
-
(1994) Festival International Du Film Des Metiers D’Art; Centre Culturel et
Artistique Jean-Lurçat; Aubusson, France -
(1996) Glass Art Society Conference, Los Angeles
-
(2002 ) Featured on spike.com
COMING SOON!
Me and the Man Who Made Mapplethorpe (Memoir 2024)
Roberta Degnore is the author of a new memoir about her intense friendship with art curator and collector Sam Wagstaff, also known as the artistic mentor and benefactor who championed the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.
THE BACKSTORY
“Samuel Jones Wagstaff was the product of old Yankee money and private schools. He was the famed collector who catapulted photography to an art form. Chisel-featured handsome, he wore his patrician refinement over ratty jeans and socks with holes. An elegantly cheap bastard, he spent fortunes on art but was an annoying bummer of cigarettes — although generous with weed and coke. Publicly, Sam Wagstaff was the man who made Robert Mapplethorpe’s career — and made him his lover. I was a gay woman, a second-generation Italian escapee from Detroit and barely middle-class. I shouldn’t have fit into Sam’s world. But we were obstinately and ruinously close for fifteen years until AIDS murdered him in 1987.”