A photograph of Lorde in front of a blackboard on which is written “Women are powerful and dangerous” has become a familiar, widely shared image. In response to attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and women’s and LGBT rights, the words of the self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” have lately gone viral, turning her into an online superstar.
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Isherwood’s early life resembles a Masterpiece Theatre period drama.
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Maya Cantu’s meticulously researched biography, Greasepaint Puritan: Boston to 42nd Street in the Queer Backstage Novels of Bradford Ropes, reveals the extent to which Ropes based his backstage novels on his own Broadway experiences.
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Esther Pressoir is both an engrossing biography, with its roots in serious research, and a beautifully illustrated art book. It showcases the many modes in which Pressoir worked: lithography, etchings, linocuts, scratchboard, watercolors, oils, and more.
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Interest in Rustin’s life and work has been growing. Previous works of note include John D’Emilio’s 2003 biography, which probed the impact of Rustin’s work and his struggles to maintain a public leadership role, and a collection of Rustin’s impassioned correspondence titled I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters, edited by Michael G. Long and published in 2012. Long has now edited a collection of essays by a range of Rustin scholars titled Bayard Rustin: A Legacy of Protest and Politics.
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THE AMERICAN classical music composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981) grew up in wealthy suburban Philadelphia, part of a music-loving family that included his aunt, Metropolitan Opera star contralto Louise Homer, and her husband Sydney, a minor composer. As a result, young Sam was able to meet and move in the world of the major figures in the East Coast classical music scene at an age when most music students would have just been looking on in awe from afar.
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LONNEKE GEERLINGS opens her biography of Rosey E. Pool, I Lay This Body Down, by depicting her subject getting off a cattle car destined for Auschwitz. Convincing the authorities that she was a guard who had lost her identifying armband, combined with her fluent German, served to win her a temporary reprieve. In any event, this quick-witted evasion both saved her life and forever marked her with survivor’s guilt.
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FRANCES BINGHAM has written a biography that reads like an Iris Murdoch novel, specifically A Fairly Honourable Defeat. It’s a moving portrait of the life of British poet Valentine Ackland (1906–1969), but it’s also about her longtime companion Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893–1978), an accomplished novelist and poet.
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[O]ne can hope that future biographers will build on [Troy R.] Saxby’s exploration of the human side of Pauli Murray, so that she can take her place in the pantheon of LGBT thinkers and activists.
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Francesca Wade wants us to rediscover the five subjects of the book within “a sense of place”—Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury, London. The author offers mini-profiles of five writers: All five who resided at Mecklenburgh Square at some point between 1916 and 1940.
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