Biographies of Women

About 15 months ago, I wrote a blog post about my pandemic project of listening to biographies of creative women. I have continued listening to biographies (and memoirs in some cases) of interesting women. Here’s an updated list of women I have learned about.

1. May Sarton: a biography by Margot Peters
2. James Tiptree, Jr. : The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips
3. Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer by Arthur Lubow
4. Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits by Linda Gordon
5. The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography by Hilary Holladay
6. Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy by Leslie Brody
7. Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern by Francine Prose
8. Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe by Laurie Lisle
9. Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser
10. Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark
11. Make Trouble by Cecile Richards
12. In Pieces by Sally Field
13. Becoming by Michelle Obama
14. The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher
15. Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir by Padma Lakshmi
16. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
17. Know My Name: A Memoir by Chanel Miller
18. Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton
19. How I Became a Writer by Gloria Steinem
20. The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s by Maggie Doherty (about Anne Sexton, Maxine Kumin, Barbara Swan, Mariana Pineda, and Tillie Olson)
21. Blue Territory: A Meditation on the Life and Art of Joan Mitchell by Tandy Cronyn
22. Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade (about Hilda Doolittle, Dorothy Sayers, Jane Harrison, Eileen Power, and Virginia Woolf)
23. Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry
24. Sybille Bedford: A Life by Selina Hastings
25. Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop by Thomas Travisano
26. Dark Star: A Biography of Vivien Leigh by Alan Strachan
27. Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement that Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel
28. A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia Butler by Lynell George
29. Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks by Stephen Davis
30. If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth by Barbara Leaming
31. Three Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton by Gail Crowther
32. Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995 by Patricia Highsmith and Anna von Planta
33. Marlene Dietrich: The Life by Maria Riva
34. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford
35. Ten Steps to Nanette: A Memoir Situation by Hannah Gadsby
36. Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand by William J. Mann
37. Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer (about Babe Paley, Gloria Guiness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Hayward, Pamela Churchill, C.Z. Guest, and Lee Radziwell)
38. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

Image Credit: Shadow Angel taken by me on August 24, 2019