Members

Member NameProject
Carol AscherI am working on A Long Loyalty: Mary Todd in the U.S. and Cuba, the biography of Mary Todd (1941-2016), who moved to Cuba when she was 23; though her life was beset by personal tragedy, she became an English teacher, interpreter, and Cuba's foremost English translator. I am also the author of Simone de Beauvoir: a Life of Freedom (Beacon Press, 1981); an editor with Sara Ruddick and Louise deSalvo of Between Women: Biographers, Novelists, Critics, Teachers and Artists Write about their Work on Women (Beacon Press, 1984, and Routledge, 1993); and the author of a group biography, A Chance for Land and Fresh Air: Russian Jews in Sharon and Amenia, 1907-1945 (Sharon Historical Society, 2018).
Patricia AusposBreaking Conventions: Five Couples in Search of Marriage-Career Balance at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century (forthcoming in 2023)
Susan BarileThe Letters of Edith Wharton to Bernard & Mary Berenson
Evelyn Barish Writing a memoir. A study of women called Sea Change: Women Artists Abroad. is on the back burner, but simmering.
Lynne Bermont
Dina Vierny
Louise BerkinowVote for Women NY: The Campaign for the City
Marcia BiedermanMy latest completed work, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill: Abortion, Death, and Concealment in Victorian New England (Chicago Review Press, forthcoming July 2023), is about a once-famous case that started with the discovery of a dismembered body in a Connecticut pond and ended by blowing the lid off abortion -- then commonplace throughout New England. Previous work: A Mighty Force: Dr. Elizabeth Hayes and Her War for Public Health (Prometheus, 2021)
Sallie Bingham"Little Brother" a memoir Sarabande Books 2022. Previous: "Treason: A Sallie Bingham Reader" Sarabane Books
Annette BlaugrundThomas Cole's Studios, 2022, Editor, contributor and project manager
Abigail Burnham BloomI am working on a literary biography of the Bronte Sisters for publication by Wiley in their Life of the Author series.
Rachel BrownsteinBecoming a Heroine, 1982
Elizabeth BrunazziOrganizer, Editor, Translator, "This Land, My Beloved, a Trilingual Anthology of Contemporary Haitian Poetry," under contract for publication, Trilingual Press, Cambridge, Mass, 2022.
Betty Boyd CaroliFirst Ladies: The Ever-Changing Role, from Martha Washington to Melania Trump (2019); Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage that made A President (2015).
Mary Ann CawsCurrent: Symbolism, Dada, Surrealism: Selected Essays of Mary Ann Caws. Previous:
Dora Maar: life and works, Little Brown,
2019
Kathy ChamberlainJane Welsh Carlyle and Her Victorian World: A Story of Love, Work, Friendship, and Marriage (2017)
Mary ChapmanIntimate Empire: The Story of Sui Sin Far’s Family is an accessible, illustrated biography of Chinese North American author Edith Eaton (“Sui Sin Far”), her British- and Chinese-born parents, and her illustrious siblings, before, during, and after the Exclusion Era. Previous:
Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and US Modernism (Oxford University Press, cloth 2014; paper 2017).
Becoming Sui Sin Far: The Uncollected Fiction, Journalism and Travel Writing of Edith Eaton. McGill-Queen’s University Press 2016.
Norah ChaseElba Chase Nelson, head of the Communist Party of NH 1934-1961
Ava ChinFamily memoir set in turn-of-the-century New York's Chinatown.
Karen Christensen Too Near the Flame, a biography-memoir focused on the wives of two influential but wildly different 20th-century writers, showing the connections between them and their startling relevance today. Previous: Women and Leadership (2nd edition): Navigating Change from Ancient Times to the Present. Coeditor. SAGE Encyclopedia of Community, 4 volumes. Senior editor.
Heather ClarkTwo projects currently underway: Group biography about the Boston years of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich and Maxine Kumin; and a biography of the poet Anne Sexton. Previous: Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Knopf 2020) and The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (Oxford University Press 2011)
Barbara Flug ColinMemoir
Blanche Wiesen CookEleanor Roosevelt, Volume III (2016)
Sally CookUnmatched: The Brief, Blazing Life and Career of Tennis Legend, Little Mo Connolly
Sarah CovingtonLiaison with and Director of the Biography and Memoir M.A. Program at the CUNY Graduate Center; The Devil from Over the Sea: Remembering and Forgetting Oliver Cromwell in Ireland.
Kate CulkinThinking of My Sister: Ellent Tucker Emerson, Edith Emerson Forbes, and the Emerson Legacy; Previous: Harriet Hosmer: A Cultural Biography (2010).
June Cumberbatch
Dâna-Ain DavisLiaison with CUNY Graduate Center, Women and Gender Studies.
Page Dougherty Delano
Rebecca Donner A biography of Mildred Harnack (American woman in German Resistence: my great-great aunt). All the frequent trouble of our days.
Barbara FisherLionel Trilling, Literary and cultural critic of mid-century America.
Jennifer FleischnerMrs Lincoln & Mrs Keckly, Elizabeth Heyrick, Br abolitionist.
Ruth Franklinshort biography of Anne Frank for the Yale Jewish Lives series, forthcoming 2023. Previous: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Liveright 2016)
Sara B. FranklinTHE EDITOR: How Judith Jones Shaped Food and Culture in America. Narrative biography of the legendary Knopf editor (1924-2017) who fished Anne Frank’s diary from the slush pile and nurtured the talents of Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bowen, Julia Child, John Updike, Anne Tyler, and a veritable who’s who of 20th century food writing fame. Previous: Edna Lewis: At the Table with an American Original (UNC Press,
2018); The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook (Clarkson Potter, 2020)
Allison GilbertElsie Robinson, 20th-century American journalist. Previous: Passed and Present: Keeping Memories of Loved Ones Alive and Parentless Parents: How the Loss of Our Mothers and Fathers Impacts the Way We Raise Our Children
Sherry Gorelick"On the Road to Peace" Collective biography of N Am Jewish Feminists & the Isreali Palestinian conflict.
Linda GrassoFeeling You Near: Letters of Love Between Georgia O'Keeffe and Mary Callery. Previous: Equal Under the Sky: Georgia O'Keeffe and Twentieth-Century Feminism (University of New Mexico Press, 2017). The Artistry of Anger: Black and White Women's Literature in America, 1820-1860 (University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
Rachel GreenfieldBiography of Rose Knox - leading businesswoman of 1920s and 1930s - President of Knox Gelatine from 1908-1948 - highlighting her life and early espousal of the approach that working women can do it all. Previous: Exemplary Entrepreneurs? The Public Image of Two of New York
State’s Female Business Leaders, 1915–1935
New York History, Volume 100, Number 2, Winter 2019,
Kathryn HearstHistorian working on - Phoebe Apperson Hearst: Civic Builder of the West. Also working on a memoir - a marriage and a muse.
Dorothy O. HellyLife and work of first woman employed on staff of The Times (London) in 1890s, specializing in reporting the colonies (had a column entitled "The Colonies").
Barbara Horn"Missouri Breaks: Memories of Small Town Life" & "When God Tasted Like Chicken." Previous: Various personal essays in "Nassau Review, "Iowa Woman," & "Esprit"
Gail HornsteinAccess to previously-sealed letters between Fromm-Reichmann and her mother and sisters during World War II, and renewed interest in her psychotherapeutic approach to highly distressed patients, are bringing many invitations to speak about her life and work and inspiring an essay exploring the process of reconnecting with one’s biographical subject after more than 20 years psychological life. Previous:

Agnes’s Jacket: A psychologist’s search for the meanings of madness. NY: Rodale Books, 2009/rev. edition Routledge, 2017.
Polly HowellsFamily memoir.
Sheila IsenbergIn negotiation — Netflix docuseries (Women Who Love Men Who Kill) to be produced by women in London and LA, focuses on women's pasts as they inform their present/true crime; A Hero of Our Own, biography of Varian Fry, originally published by Random House, to be published in France in 2023; Seeking agent for Murder Stories: And Why We❤️Them (relationship between love of true crime & aspects of women's lives).
Diane JacobsEdith Wharton's Paris years 1907 - 1920.. Previous Project: Dear Abigail: The Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and Her Two Remarkable Sisters (2014). Currently: A biography of Edith Wharton during her Paris years 1907 - 1920.
Marjorie G. Jones"At the Crossroads" a Frances Yates mystery, takes place in Budapest, where Yates gave her last public talk in 1980. Previous: Frances Yates and the Hermetic Tradition (Ibis, 2008)/ The Life and Times of Mary Vaux Walcott (Schiffer, 2015)
Eve Kahnbio provisionally titled Queen of Bohemia Predicts Own Death: The Forgotten Writer Zoe Anderson Norris, 1860-1914. Previous: Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams, 1857-1907 (Wesleyan U. Press, 2019)
Carla KaplanQueen of the Muckrakers: The Life and Times of Jessica Mitford. Previous: Miss Anne In Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance; Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters.
Jane LancasterAfro-Narragansett Phebe Bowler and her enslaved African-born husband travel five thousand miles in search of freedom. Narrative nonfiction. Previous: Biography of Lillian Gilbreth, industrial engineer. "Making Time: A Life Beyond Cheaper By the Dozen" Northeastern University Press, 1996, Kindle 2015.
Patricia LaurenceYoung adult biography. Previous: Elizabeth Bowen: A Literary Life (2021); poetry collection: Windows at Manch and other Poems (2022).
Gail LevinBiography of Sajitha Shankhar: Woman artist in India and memoir essays.
Laurie LisleI am writing personal essays and gathering previous ones for a book. Previous: Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe.
Sarah M. LoweTIna Modotti and Edward Weston: The Mexico Years
The Diary of Frida Kahlo
Elizabeth MacaulayLiaison, CUNY Graduate Center, MA in Liberal Studies
Emily Arnold McCullyThe pre-Second Wave life of a brilliant, gifted woman who regretted her life but set out to ensure that her daughters wouldn't repeat her mistakes. (They did, but along came the Second Wave to set them straight). Previous: Two picture books out in 2022: Taking Off, Airborne With Mary Wilins Ellis and Our Little Mushroom, A Story of Franz Schubert. Working on The Eclipse, about the night that proved Relativity and made Einsrein world famous
Sara McDougallSurviving illicit pregnancy Medieval France.
Honor MooreMemoir of my mother Jenny McKean Moore
Marnie MuellerMy hybrid memoir/biography, "THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER: A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration," to be published in 2022 or early 2023 with Peace Corps Writers, an imprint of Peace Corps Worldwide, focuses on my long-time friendship with Mary Mon Toy, a Nisei performer. Previous: My novel, THE CLIMATE OF THE COUNTRY, originally published in 1999 with Curbstone Press, (currently held by Northwestern University Press), gives a fictional perspective on life and work in the Tule Lake Japanese American High Security Segregation Camp in northern California during WWII. I offer it as a companion to my current memoir/biography, THE SHOWGIRL AND THE WRITER: A Friendship Forged in the Aftermath of the Japanese American Incarceration.
Janice NimuraThe Doctors Blackwell (Norton 2021), Daughters of the Samurai (Norton 2015)
Jill NorgrenHer Hat Was in the Ring will be the first, ground breaking book on U.S. women who ran for elective office in the years 1850 to 1920--sometimes winning in communities where women could not vote! Previous: Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would be President (NY New York University Press, 2007).
Victoria OlsenI've completed a draft of a memoir about my father and grandfather's careers in art and design.
Sreca Perunovic A memoir about my two lives: The first one in the former Yugoslavia and the second my American life.
Carla PetersonBlack Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York.
Victoria PhillipsMother of Berlin: Eleanor Lansing Dulles and her Cold Wars, 1952-1968. Previous: Martha Graham's Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy (Oxford, 2020)
Amy ReadingKatharine S. White Edits The New Yorker, a biographer of the first and longtime fiction editor, her contribution to 20th c American literature, and her literary marriage to E.B White. Previous: The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con.
Harriet Rose ReisenOn the Cover of Time: A Memoir in Songs
Roxana Robinson"Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life" Brandeis University Press "Dawson's Fall" FSG
Stacy SchiffVERA (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov); CLEOPATRA: A Life; THE WITCHES: Salem, 1692
Dee ShapiroI am working on an artist book/fictional biography of my grandmother. "From Riches to Rags in Three Generations.
Alix Kates ShulmanThe Visionaries, a novel about 1960s radical feminist activists in their old age (now).
Sydney Ladensohn SternIrene Mayer Selznick. Previous: The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics (2019, 2020, 2022); Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics, and Mystique (1997)
Nancy Rubin StuartDEFIANT BRIDES; The Untold Story of Two Revolutionary-Era Women and the Racial Men They Married (Beacon Press, 2013); THE MUSE OF THE REVOLUTION; THE MUSE OF THE REVOLUTION: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Radical Men They Married (Beacon Press, 2008).
Annie Tan
Terese SvobodaHitler and My Mother-in-Law. Previous: Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet, Schaffner Press, 2016.
Black Glasses Like Clark Kent. Graywolf Press, 2008.
Patricia ValentiA group biography of Americans who lived in Rome during the 1850s. Previous: Sophia Peabody Hawthorne: A Life, 2 vols, University of Missouri Press, 2004, 2014; co-author with Rosalind Williams, Serving Time Too: A Memoir of My Son's Prison Years, Hamilton Books, 2019.
Julia Van Haaften Creation of NYPL photography dept, 1975+, memoir. Previous: 2020, co-author, "Archives" in 'Documentary in Dispute' = https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262044172/; 2018, author 'Berenice Abbott: A LIfe in Photography' = https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393292787
Frances Vieta"Love in the Land of Barefoot Soldiers" a novel
Lise VogelMemoir, set in part during the Spanish Civil War and provisionally titled "Sidney and Lisa: My Father, His Lover, and Myself."
Sheila WellerAuthor of Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and Carrie Fisher: A Life on the Edge
Kate WennerKate Wenner’s new memoir "Rainbow Road" is an intimate and revealing examination of her mother’s profound pathological narcissism, its painful legacy in her own life, and the empathy she discovered as she struggled not pass that legacy onto to her own children. Previous: Dancing With Einstein (a novel) Scribner: 2004; Setting Fires (a novel) Scribner 2000
Brenda Wineapple"White Heat" about the friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson published by Knopf(2008). "Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, Compromise,1848 -1877" (much about women's suffrage) published by Harper, 2013. Currently, a book about the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.   
Michele ZackheimA novel about writing a memoir and biography. Previous: