Tag Archive for Women Writers

Happy Birthday to Mary Rogers Williams!

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Today, September 30th, 2020, would have been Mary Rogers Williams’ 163rd birthday. The obscure, often forgotten American tonalist and Impressionist artist was most well known for her stunning pastel and oil portraits and landscapes. Born and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, as a baker’s daughter, Williams travelled widely throughout Europe when she wasn’t teaching in the art department at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. An incredibly active woman, she hiked and biked across Europe, while chafing against art world rules that favored men, and writing thousands of pages that record her travels and work. Her paintings offer remarkable horizon views of ancient ruins, medieval towns, country meadows, and calm waters. Her work was exhibited at various venues in the United States and France while she was still living. Much of her work has stayed in Connecticut and the Northeast, held by institutions including the Smith College Museum of Art, Connecticut Landmarks, and the Connecticut Historical Society.

Forever Seeing New Beauties: The Forgotten Impressionist Mary Rogers Williams, 1857–1907, by Eve Kahn is a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award. The book is up for the Bruce Fraser “Spirit of Connecticut” Award. Bruce Fraser, director of Connecticut Humanities for 28 years, was a proponent of Connecticut’s sense of place. He was interested in how places evoke memory and emotions from people, how people have such ferocious identification and loyalty to their surroundings and how the very landscape influences people. Mary Rogers Williams’ life and legacy embody the values of this award—Williams was deeply tied to, influenced by, and involved with her roots in Connecticut.

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Green Landscape—Hills in the Distance (probably Connecticut
River Valley), 1903 pastel, 12 ½ x 22 in. Smith College Museum of Art,
Northampton, MA, gift of the sisters of Mary Rogers
Williams

Until recently, little was known or remembered about Williams. But in 2012, the artist’s confessional letters as well as hundreds of her paintings and sketches turned up in storage at a Connecticut family’s home. The resulting book reveals her as strong, funny, self-deprecating, caustically critical of mainstream art, and observant of everything from soldiers’ epaulettes to colorful produce layered on delivery trucks. She was determined to paint portraits and landscapes in her distinctive style—and so she did. The book reproduces her unpublished artworks that capture pensive gowned women, Norwegian slopes reflected in icy waters, saw-tooth rooflines on French chateaus, and incense hazes in Italian chapels. Forever Seeing New Beauties offers a vivid portrayal of an adventurer, defying her era’s expectations on a tight budget. Today we remember Mary Rogers Williams for her standout style, adventurous personality, and bold wit.

The author, Eve Kahn, will be lecturing on the book for Boston Design Week, on October 14th, in remote event. Learn more and register here. 

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Some of Mary Rogers Williams’ letters and papers. Photo by Eve Kahn.

 

 

Wesleyan University Press’ Antiracist Reading Lists!

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To celebrate the continuous struggle for freedom and equality in America, Wesleyan University Press has compiled a few antiracist reading lists in order to amplify BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) voices, experiences, and histories. Below are just a few of the fantastic titles Wesleyan University Press has published by BIPOC authors or about the Black historical legacy. Poetry, music and dance, autobiography, science fiction, historical novels, and more show the breadth of these lyrical, literary, and scholarly contributions. We are dedicated to supporting Black authors and stories, to listening and learning through publishing and reading. This moment is highlighting just how much work there is to be done in order to dismantle systemic racism in our country; these books help show us why that work is so important and how we can begin to integrate it into our daily lives and reading practices. Black lives matter!

To order books and view our full list of titles, please visit https://www.hfsbooks.com/publishers/wesleyan-university-press/ or click on the below cover images to visit a book page directly. And don’t forget to look out for Beyoncé in the World: Making Meaning with Queen Bey in Troubled Times edited by Christina Baade and Kristin McGee– forthcoming in Spring 2021!

The following list includes poetry, science fiction, historical novels, and non-fiction.

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A Hubert Harrison Reader

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Five Black Lives

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African American Connecticut Explored

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100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof

 

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The Little Edges by Fred Moten

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The Book of Landings by Mark McMorris

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Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip

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Un-American by Hafizah Geter

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The Lazarus Poems by Kamau Brathwaite

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Magic City by Yusef Komunyakaa

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The Peacock Poems by Sherley Anne Williams

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semiautomatic by Evie Shockley

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In the Language of My Captor by Shane McCrae

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To See the Earth Before the End of the World by Ed Roberson

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Butting Out: Reading Resistive Choreographies Through Works by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Chandralekha by Ananya Chatterjea

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Trophic Cascade by Camille T. Dungy

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The Age of Phillis by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

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Fela: Kalakuta Notes by John Collins

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The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas

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Dub: Soundscapes and Shattered Songs in Jamaican Reggae by Michael E. Veal

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Why Haiti Needs New Narratives: A Post-Quake Chronicle by Gina Athena Ulysse

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Come home Charley Patton by Ralph Lemon

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Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America by Tricia Rose

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The Logbooks: Connecticut’s Slave Ships and Human Memory by Anne Farrow

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The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany

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How to Dress a Fish by Abigail Chabitnoy

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Blue Ravens by Gerald Vizenor

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In Mad Love and War by Joy Harjo