News
Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones Featured in Recent Major Exhibition at PAFA
If you missed seeing Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones works in shared glory with many of her fellow women artist friends, have no fear! The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum published a beautiful hardcover book of its magnificent exhibit, Women in Motion: 150 Years of Women's Artistic Networks at PAFA, curated by Anna O. Marley.
Alongside works by Cecilia Beaux, Mary Cassatt, Violet Oakley, and Alice Kent Stoddard (whose portrait of ESJ is included), you'll have a chance to see In Rittenhouse Square and The Market. If you are interested, the book is still available in the museum store.
Debut Novel in Progress: The Magic of Dead Things
"I cannot help making fables and bitter fairy tales out of my life." Elinor Wylie
Since the release of Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones: The Artist Who Lived Twice, Barbara Lehman Smith remains drawn to stories of overlooked yet influential women of the 20th century. Evoking the world of the modern biographer, she is currently at work on The Magic of Dead Things, a novel about four wildly different biographers who are unknowingly researching the same real-life subject, a famously beautiful "madcap society poet" and reluctant feminist. As they gradually become consumed by the parallels of navigating the country's sharp swing to the right to the early 20th century dramas of the dazzling Elinor Wylie, they come to believe that she and other departed souls are showing them the way out.
Biographers International Organization News:
BIO Receives $1Million Gift from Kitty Kelley
As a new member of BIO's Board of Directors, I'm thrilled by fellow board member Kitty Kelley's recent endowment of $1 million to the organization. You may know Kitty as the bestselling author of multiple biographies, but she is also a walking inspiration of joy, passion, and steely will developed by barreling through obstacles that would have crushed lesser writers. She says that she hopes her endowment will "enable BIO to continue sharing the gifts of life stories."
If you're interested in joining BIO, find out more here.
With 2023 BIO Award winner Kitty Kelley at the annual May conference in NYC.
