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Donald Proffit
ALLi Author Member
Location: United States of America (the)
Genres: LGBTQ+, General Fiction, Memoir
Donald Proffit, a visionary in the creative arts, has been short-listed for the 2024 William Saroyan International Writing Prize in nonfiction. With a background that spans music, dance, and visual arts, Donald holds a B.Mus.Ed. from Westminster Choir College, an Ed.M. in Creative Arts Education from Rutgers University, and an M.S.Ed. with a Visual Arts Focus from Bank Street College of Education and Parsons School of Design. He has trained with performance artist Ping Chong and studied music improvisation for dance at the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance. His numerous accolades include a John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Teacher Fellowship, two New Jersey Governor’s Awards in Arts Education, and the D. Bennet Mazur Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Personal Liberty Fund of the New Jersey Lesbian and Gay Coalition for his profound contributions to society.
Donald Proffit's books
Hardship Alaska: A Memoir
Haunted by unresolved memories of his Vietnam-era alternative service, Donald Proffit, aka Buzz, reflects on the most formative period of his life. After a ten-day, eventful journey from Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Anchorage, Alaska—marked by car troubles, a freak snow squall, rough encounters, and unexpected kindness—he arrives on Halloween night in 1970, realizing his world will change forever. In Alaska, he works with children in group homes and shelters, lives in a church basement closet while grappling with his own identity, and spends time in an Iñupiaq whaling village north of the Arctic Circle, where the isolation of being an outsider and the strength of community shape his understanding of himself and the world.