My passion is for stories about how art can help us become more authentic, whole, and fulfilled as human beingsâthatâs my âbrandâ as a writer (and reader). No, Iâm not a painter, and Iâve never studied art history. Rather, Iâm what they call a âserious amateurâ pianist and photographerâan âamateurâ being someone who studies for love of the craft. In fact, Iâve found that the more I give myself to these other art forms, the better I become as a writerâas if these other forms of creative expression open new places in me that enhance my stories and characters.
LâOrigine by artist and writer Lilianne Milgrom is a unique, well-researched, and absolutely compelling book. Part history and part memoir, it tells the story of Gustave Courbetâs LâOrigine du monde, a painting known as âthe worldâs most erotic masterpiece,â along with its effect on a young woman (the author) who set out to be its official âcopyist.â Ultimately, it is the painting itself that liberates and transforms the protagonistâjust as it will liberate and transform the reader! It certainly did that for me, cutting through all my ideas about the role of art and its depictions of the female bodyâin much the same way that Georgia OâKeeffeâs paintings, and the nude photographs she posed for, liberates and transforms the protagonist of my own novel.Â
Winner of 5 major book awards, including the Publishers Weekly U.S. 2021 Selfies Award for Best Adult Fiction and winner of the IndieReader 2021 Discovery Award.
âLâOrigine got me hookedâwhat a story! Milgrom brings the reader right along on her adventures as a copyist of one of the most well-known paintings in all the world.â âHarriet Welty Rochefort, author of French Fried, French Toast, Joie de Vivre, and Final Transgression
The riveting odyssey of one of the worldâs most scandalous works of art.
In 1866, maverick French artist Gustave Courbet painted one of the most iconic images in the historyâŚ
In The Age of Light, protagonist Lee Miller is both model (for surrealist photographer Man Ray) and artistâmuch like Georgia OâKeeffe, the muse and hub of my own novel. Leeâs story, as she struggles with the question of how to stay true to herself while fulfilling her artistic ambitionâand what that fulfillment may cost herâresonates strongly with me. Itâs a struggle that so many women can relate to!Â
'Scharer captures the thrill of artistic creation and the swirling hedonism of Paris's beautiful people.' The Times
Model. Muse. Lover. Artist.
'I'd rather take a picture than be one,' Lee Miller declares, as she arrives in Paris one cool day in 1929. Lee has left behind her life in New York and a successful modelling career at Vogue to pursue her dream of becoming a photographer. She soon catches the eye of renowned Surrealist artist Man Ray and convinces him to hire her as his assistant. Man is an egotistical, charismatic force, and as Lee becomes both his muse andâŚ
Hope, Laughter, Survival on the Refugee Trail
by
Eileen Kay,
Dramatic true story with a wacky sense of humor.
Retired English teacher in Budapest meets foreign medical students fleeing the war in Ukraine, producing a sweet and unlikely friendship, spicy soup, and wicked joking. A sense of humor, however dark, can keep us from despair.
There are so many elements in The Last Painting of Sara DeVos that echo themes in my own work! A female artist who dares to defy convention and gender boundaries. An art history graduate student, a passionless marriage, and the question of who âownsâ a work of art. An act of questionable judgment that leads to the unraveling of a carefully-constructed life. How could I not feel a profound kinship with this well-researched, beautifully written, intellectually absorbing novel about the power of art to transform a womanâs life?Â
'. . . worthy of comparison to Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch . . . A masterly, multilayered story that will dazzle readers.' Library Journal (starred review)
In 1631, Sara de Vos is admitted to the Guild of St. Luke in Holland as a master painter, the first woman to be so honoured. Three hundred years later, only one work attributed to de Vos is known to remain - a haunting winter scene, At the Edge of a Wood, which hangs over the Manhattan bed of a wealthy descendant of the original owner.âŚ
In The Soul of a Woman, renowned novelist Isabel Allende tells her own story of a woman living through several iterations of the feminist movement. Allende learns how to open and grow as a woman, with and without a partnerâwhen to commit, and when to step awayâand how to embrace her own sexuality. Her journey is all of our journey, and has strong parallels with the journey of the protagonist in my own novel.
From the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea comes âa bold exploration of womanhood, feminism, parenting, aging, love and moreâ (Associated Press).
âThe Soul of a Woman is Isabel Allendeâs most liberating book yet.ââElle
âWhen I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,â begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without âresources or voice.â Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldnât have.
Two women, a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives after leaving their homelands. Arriving in tropical Singapore, they find romance, but also find they havenât left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.
Haunted by the specter of terrorism after 9/11, Aislinn Givens leaves her New York careerâŚ
In The Hours, Cunningham masterfully weaves together the stories of three women who will never meet, yet are connected through the influence of Virginia Woolf (one of the three) on their lives. Cunningham shows how artâin this case, Mrs. Dalloway, one of Woolfâs most brilliant novelsâcan have a profound influence that the artist could never have predicted and will never know. As someone striving to produce her own art (in my case, through novels about the impact of art on human lives) that speaks to me in a very deep way, and gives me hope.
Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize and Pen Faulkner prize. Made into an Oscar-winning film, 'The Hours' is a daring and deeply affecting novel inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf.
In 1920s London, Virginia Woolf is fighting against her rebellious spirit as she attempts to make a start on her new novel.
A young wife and mother, broiling in a suburb of 1940s Los Angeles, yearns to escape and read her precious copy of 'Mrs Dalloway'.
And Clarissa Vaughan steps out of her smart Greenwich village apartment in 1990s New York to buy flowers for a partyâŚ
Winner of multiple awards, Queen of the Owls is the powerful story of a womanâs quest to claim her neglected sensuality and find her true self hidden behind the roles of wife, mother, sister, colleague. Framed by the life and art of iconic American painter Georgia OâKeeffe, it dares to ask a question every woman can relate to: what would you risk to be truly seen and known?
A chance meeting with a charismatic photographer will forever change Elizabethâs life. Until she met Richard, Elizabeth's relationship with Georgia OâKeeffe and her art was purely academic. Now, itâs personal. When Richard reawakens a yearning thatâs haunted Elizabeth since she was a child, Elizabeth takes a step she never imaginedâand her life begins to unravel.
The Stark Beauty of Last Things
by
CĂŠline Keating,
This book is set in Montauk, under looming threat from a warming climate and overdevelopment. Now outsider Clancy, a thirty-six-year-old claims adjuster scarred by his orphan childhood, has inherited an unexpected legacy: the power to decide the fate of Montaukâs last parcel of undeveloped land. Everyone in town has aâŚ
This delightful fable about the Golden Age of Broadway unfolds the warm story of Artie, a young rehearsal pianist, Joe, a visionary director, and Carrie, his crackerjack Girl Friday, as they shepherd a production of a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream towards opening night.Â
