By Jon Macy | On February 22, 2025 | Comments (0)
Djuna Barnes was a Modernist writer whose various talents and eccentricities made her unique. She went to great lengths to protect her privacy, so it’s not surprising that she had a whole closet full of skeletons. These fascinating facts about Djuna Barnes are presented by Jon Macy, creator of the graphic novel Djuna: The Extraordinary Life of Djuna Barnes.
Childhood trauma armored Djuna with a razor sharp wit, and an almost Ahab-and-the-whale, determination to succeed as a writer. Immensely talented, she was a journalist, poet, artist and novelist.
She became a celebrated star in 1920s Paris along with her friends James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein. Her masterpiece, Nightwood, is one of the greatest lesbian novels ever written, and her influence on modern writers reverberates into the present. Read More→
By Marsha Gordon | On February 11, 2025 | Comments (0)
Once the most renowned ex-wife in America, bestselling author Ursula Parrott (1899 – 1957) was routinely described as “famous” in her lifetime when the press covered her new books, Hollywood deals, marriages and divorces, and run-ins with the law.
As I detail in Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life & Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott, she published twenty books from the late 1920s through the late 1940s, several of them bestsellers, and over one hundred short stories, articles, and novel-length magazine serials.
Ursula Parrott piloted for the Civilian Air Corps during World War II; co-founded a weekly rural Connecticut newspaper with a group including American Newspaper Guild founder Heywood Broun and her literary agent George Bye; was an informant in a federal drug investigation; and travelled the world, including an extended story-collecting trip to Russia in the 1930s. And between all her writing and other adventures, she married (and divorced) four times. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On February 6, 2025 | Updated March 18, 2025 | Comments (0)
Women from all walks of life have turned to authorship as a medium for self-expression and social impact. They address universal issues from defining one’s identity as a woman in the world to finding the resilience to handle life’s trials and tribulations.
The literary world wasn’t always welcoming to female writers. Some wrote under pseudonyms so that their gender wouldn’t have an effect on the reception of their work. Women writers were often sidelined from prestigious awards, with the result that brilliant works weren’t considered worthy of recognition.
Authors like Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf were among those who slowly changed the face of the male-dominated publishing industry. Austen’s on-point social observations have delighted readers for generations, while Woolf’s classic feminist writings have remained relevant. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On January 31, 2025 | Comments (0)
To write a great novel (or even a decent one), it seems that a writer should have a certain amount of life experience. But that’s not always the case — not in the past, and not in the present. Following are seven novels written when their authors were precocious young women — some still in their teens.
Some have become iconic classics; others sold in the millions are forgotten bestsellers.
So, what of it? Maybe the point is that if you have a story inside of you, find a way to tell it no matter what your age — tender through advanced. It may not become a classic or a bestseller or even be published, but at least will be something to build on. Read More→
By N.J. Mastro | On January 17, 2025 | Updated May 9, 2025 | Comments (0)
In the 2021 historical novel The Personal Librarian, authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray illuminate the story of Belle da Costa Greene, private librarian to financial mogul J.P. Morgan. Her expertise and passion were foundational to the beginnings of the Morgan Library and Museum, a cultural gem that continues to thrive in New York City.
This overview of The Personal Librarian novel and its real-life subject is reprinted from the website of N.J. Mastro, with permission. Photo at right is from The Morgan Library & Museum.
The Personal Librarian (2021) opens in 1905. After amassing his fortune, J.P. Morgan has set out to build the finest personal library in the world. In the novel, J.P. casts an imposing figure, as he did in real life. Imagine Rich Uncle Pennybags from the board game, Monopoly, the man on whom the caricature is based. Read More→
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