Frances Pici oral history interview, June 7, 2014

Item — othertype: Oral History

Identifier: PiciF_20140607

Staff Only

Frances Pici oral history interview

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Scope and Contents

Interviewed by Lorraine Fontana. In this interview, Frances Pici describes her upbringing in Buffalo, N.Y. as the only daughter in an Italian Catholic family. She discusses the emergence of her lesbian feminist identity, which began during her undergraduate studies at the University of Buffalo. Pici talks about moving from Buffalo to Atlanta in the 1970s, when she joined ALFA (Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance) and the ALFA Omegas, the first openly lesbian softball team in the city of Atlanta's softball league. Pici describes the experiences she had living in a lesbian collective house in Atlanta, including the interpersonal relationships and dynamics that were part of the group. Many of the women in the collective were artistic and creative, and they eventually formed the Red Dyke Theatre, an irreverent and unconventional lesbian theater troupe. Pici details her experiences with Red Dyke Theatre and with the Southeastern Arts Media and Education Project (SAME), a multi-disciplinary gay and lesbian arts education nonprofit. Pici talks briefly about working at CNN and at Emory University, and discusses her feelings about aging.

Dates

Creation: June 7, 2014

Creator

Pici, Frances Anne (Interviewee, Person)

Restrictions on Access

Oral history available for research.

Biographical Note

Pici (frances anne Pici) was born and raised in Buffalo, NY. After high school Pici enrolled in college at the University of Buffalo in 1971. During that time, U.B. was a very activist university and home to the newly created Buffalo Women’s Studies College (WSC) which was one of only two Women’s Studies Programs in the country, second only to San Diego State University. In 1974, Pici moved to Atlanta, GA, and immediately joined ALFA—the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance, which, at that time, was the first and only out of the closet lesbian-feminist organization in the country. She also joined the ALFA Omegas, the first out of the closet Lesbian Feminist softball team to play in the City of Atlanta leagues.

From 1974-1979 Pici was one of the founding mothers of Red Dyke Theatre (RDT), a lesbian feminist theatre troupe. After RDT disbanded, Pici became a City of Atlanta softball umpire, and also went on to Solo-Performance as a Feminist Mime and Comic. In 1982, Pici began her career at CNN in the CNN Library and in 1994 was part of the team who created and deployed CNN.COM. Pici received all of her college degrees from GSU, where she was awarded a B.A. in Communication/Theatre, an M.A. in Communication/Performance Studies, and an ABD Ph.D. in Moving Image Studies. In 2008, Pici started a new career at Emory University working in Woodruff Library’s Access Services, managing the Music and Media Library and is currently the Open Access Repository Analyst in the Library’s Scholarly Communication Office.