Pairing Madeleine L’Engle‘s middle-grade classic, A Wrinkle in Time, with the concept of literary rejection might seem odd, given its iconic stature. But I would challenge anyone to come up with a story that better illustrates the fine line between rejection and acceptance than hers:
“A Wrinkle in Time was almost never published. You can’t name a major publisher who didn’t reject it. When we’d run through forty-odd publishers, my agent sent it back. We gave up.”
Most editors thought it was too dark and complex for children. After some time, L’Engle made contact with John Farrar of Farrar Straus Giroux through a friend, and the rest is publishing history. Read More→
Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885 – April 16, 1968) was an American novelist and playwright whose name perhaps less known today than other classic women authors of her time.
In her heyday, Ferber was considered one of the most successful writers of the time—primarily the 1920s through the early 50s, with earning power to prove it.
Due to the many film and stage adaptations of her sprawling sagas, including Giant, Showboat, Saratoga Trunk, and Cimarron, are better remembered than she is. Read More→
Lorraine Hansberry (May 19, 1930 – January 12, 1965) was an American playwright and author. Hansberry grew up in an environment that set the stage, so to speak, for her best-known work —A Raisin in the Sun, the first play by a Black woman to be staged on Broadway.
At the age of twenty-nine, she became the youngest American and the first Black playwright to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play.
Hansberry was also known for the plays The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window and Les Blancs. The posthumous play and published collection To Be Young, Gifted and Black encapsulated a brief and brilliant career. She was only 34 years old when she died of pancreatic cancer. Read More→
Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963) was a gifted writer of poetry who ended her life at the age of thirty. Many of the truths behind her final years were exposed after her death, discovered in letters revealing the dark secrets of her tragic relationship with Ted Hughes.
Attractive, smart, and ambitious, she seemed to have what it took to succeed. But it was during her years at Smith College, where she was well-liked and academically adept, that she made her first attempt on her life.
Journal entries in her diary later revealed how much Plath struggled from that time on, until she took her own life. Her body of poetic work, much of it published posthumously, also reveals much about her state of mind during the brief journey of her adult life. Read More→
Zora Neale Hurston (1891 – 1960) was a memoirist, novelist, and folklorist who was an active member of the Harlem Renaissance literary movement. Following a sampling of quotes on life, love, and suffering from Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora’s best known work.
Always somewhat controversial, discussions and perceptions of Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) have evolved over the decades since it was first published.
The story follows Janie Crawford as she matures from a voiceless teenager compelled to marry against her will, to a woman with greater control over her own destiny. Read More→
Marguerite Annie Johnson Angelou (1928 – 2014), widely known as Maya Angelou, was an author, actress, screenwriter, dancer, poet, and civil rights activist. This celebrated, inspiring, and prolific American woman is best known for a multitude of accomplishments.
During her lifetime, she published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry. The Heart of a Woman is the fourth volume in her seven-part series of autobiographies which began so auspiciously with I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.
It’s possible that this title was an homage to a poem by the same name by Georgia Douglas Johnson. You can see this poem among this selection of Johnson’s poetry. Read More→
Madeleine L’Engle (November 29, 1918 – September 6, 2007) was an American novelist and memoirist best known for her award-winning fantasy and science fiction series for young adults and children of all ages. She’s particularly well known for A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels.
L’Engle’s writing life that can be described as one of perseverance. She recorded in detail the long years of rejection of her work as “too dark and difficult for children.”
Hers is a story of triumph following years of silence and frustration. She persisted because she felt compelled to, though she often had little to show for her labors but rejection slips. Read More→
The Little Book of Feminist Saints by Julia Pierpont & Manjit Thapp is an inspiring, beautifully illustrated collection that honors one hundred exceptional women throughout history and around the world.
In this luminous volume, New York Times bestselling writer Julia Pierpont and British artist Manjit Thapp match short, vibrant and surprising biographies with stunning full-color portraits of secular female ‘saints’: champions of strength and progress. Read More→
