Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin were significant twentieth-century poets who provided deep friendship and support for one another as they developed and mastered their craft. Literary Ladies Guide has offered fascinating musings and insights into several significant literary friendships between women writers:

• George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West
• Lillian Hellman and Dorothy Parker
• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Zora Neale Hurston

But none of these compare in intensity to the literary friendship of Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin, a relationship brought to life in The Equivalents (2020) by Maggie Doherty, an exploration of the first group of poets and artists to be part of the Institute for Independent Study at Radcliffe College (later the Bunting Institute, and now the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study). Read More→