Disobedient spans one year of Artemisia’s life, when she was just 17, a pivotal period when talent, ambition, revenge and overcoming adversity all converge for one of the top artists of the Baroque period, a woman way ahead of her time. In the words of the author, Disobedient is about “triumph, not through adversity, but triumph from adversity, turning adversity into gold.”

This Q&A has been edited for brevity.

EB: Do you think Artemesia, the first woman to be accepted into Florence’s prestigious Academy of Art and Drawing, was as talented as Caravaggio?

EF: I personally do, yes. And I think she should be as well-recognised as he is, as a painter.

Throughout the book, you have empowering, self-aware quotes from Artemesia. “You will find the spirit of Caesar in the soul of a woman.” Or “I’ll show you what a woman can do.” Where did you find those quotes?

They’re from her letters later in life when she’s convincing patrons of what she can do. She was so absolutely confident in her abilities, even as a young woman, she knew how talented she was. She knew that she was more talented than her father, even at a very early age.

Your novel, Queen’s Gambit about Henry VIII’s last wife Catherine Parr is coming out as a major motion picture in June called Firebrand starring Alicia Vikander, Jude Law, Michelle Williams and Sam Riley.

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Parr was the wife who survived. Were you involved in the making of the film at all?

I was quite involved. Often the writer of the book isn’t particularly involved with the film. But the UK producer Gabrielle Tana wanted me to feel like I was part of ‘the film family’. So, I had lots of meetings and dinners with the directors and the actors. And she wanted me to talk to them about how I conceived the novel, what I felt about the characters. I really enjoyed that.

Is there anything similar between Artemesia and Catherine Parr, both survivors? What sort of protagonists are you drawn to?

The parallels between the two women are astonishing. While Artemesia is much younger, 17, and Catherine Parr is 31, they’re both women wanting to be heard. Parr is a writer, a three times published writer. It’s a world where women are supposed to be silent. They both overcame extraordinarily dangerous obstacles to become queen of sorts.. Artemisia queen of the world of art. They both managed to understand how to work patriarchy in their favour. And they both made themselves heard and are heard centuries later. There’s no wonder I was drawn to both those women. Those are my concerns, and all my work tends to deal with those kinds of concerns.

On a more personal level in your author’s notes, you tell us how Artemesia’s story is quite personal to you- both as a reason you didn’t want to write the book, and the reason you eventually did.  Can you tell us how watching Christine Blasey Ford testify about Brett Kavenaugh in front of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018 affected you?

 Artemesia is a rape survivor, a survivor of violent rape I should say. And so am I. At a similar age, I was a teenager and I was raped by six men and left for dead. So that’s something I’ve had to come to terms with over the years. That was one of the reasons I felt I wasn’t able to write Artemesia’s story because I thought it’s too close to home.

But then a lot of women were coming out and telling their stories, the whole Me-Too Movement, and I was watching Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, and it had a profound effect on me.

I was astonished at her courage. It happens to so many women who think, well, no one’s going to believe me. So, I may as well not tell anyone. I’m just going to deal with it on my own. Or people will judge me. People will think I’m spoiled or ruined. They will judge me negatively. You live with a lot of shame.

EB That’s awful. I’m sorry.

 EF: So, seeing the way she spoke about her experience with such courage. We all believed her. And it made me very angry. Instead of the shame, it put me in touch with rage. When I revisited Artemesia’s story, I thought I can do it. It was an extraordinarily cathartic process. I used my novel and Artemesia’s life to tell my story. And that’s why the book is dedicated to all the survivors. These stories, they’ve got to be heard.

Thank you so much Liz. That’s the end of my questions. I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me and being so open and honest.

You can read the rest of my edited interview here on 26. Or you can listen to the whole Q&A here on my podcast, Elena Meets the Author.

April, 2024

The post Q&A with Elizabeth Fremantle, Author of Disobedient appeared first on Elena Bowes.

Dressed in a frilly white Chloe blouse, black Yohji Yamamoto  trousers, an over-sized black blazer that set off her chic white bob and a fabulous lavender overcoat, this vintage hipster was just as inspiring in person as she was when I interviewed her on the phone for my blog. The 72-year-old writer talked about how to view ageing positively and creatively… and realistically.  That sometimes it’s better to let go, not have an agenda, strive less, do what you love more. In Lyn’s case, that’s writing essays on Substack or for her local paper, the Peekskill Herald, being with her longtime ponytailed partner Calvin, daughter and grandchildren and being in nature. She now lives in the Hudson Valley and loves to tend to her wild garden, cycle on car-free converted railroad tracks and go antiquing for her arts and crafts home.

But this wasn’t always the case. During her sixties, Lyn gave up her job as a social worker and professor in New York to become a full-time media influencer known as the Accidental Icon with nearly a million followers. The uber-stylish Lyn rejected age as a variable to be considered in how you dress.

She got noticed, hired, and her face was splashed across billboards and buses around the world. Both Lyn and the late Joan Didion modeled sunglasses, the former for Valentino, the latter Celine. Lyn traveled the world. It was a wild ride.

But in the end Lyn felt she’d lost her way, promoting brands she felt no connection to. So, she gave it all up, and wrote a terrific memoir about her experience.

Here’s my edited Q&A with Lyn:

In your fabulous book, which is so honest, intelligent and relatable, you say that your 60’s was a tough decade. Can you briefly explain why the 60s are harder than previous decades?

Well, I think we have a lot of societal expectations that happen to you during your 60s. You have to sign up for Medicare and 65 is a traditional retirement age. I think for me, the challenge of my 60s was, how am I going to respond to all of these things? Which of them really is sort of an old idea that is no longer relevant. I think this idea that you have to retire away from the world and not work anymore, is a very outdated. Many people are finding very vibrant second careers during their 60s. I had an experience that was such an adventure that I did not have in any of my earlier years.

 I think 60 for me is also when my body really began to change pretty dramatically. I wrote about that recently in an essay called Stranger in the Mirror. All of a sudden one day you look in the mirror and you say, who is that woman? And she’s sort of you, but unrecognizable to you. I think for me, that was a big challenge. How am I going to deal with these changes in my body.

And then I remembered that my body has always changed as a woman. You know, when you’re a child to an adolescent, you’re always losing or gaining weight when you become pregnant, when you have menopause, you know, you’re always having to figure out that question. How do I dress a changing body? So again, the more that I think about age and being older as something that I have done before, that I have, in fact, even more knowledge, skills, and experiences to respond to it, the easier It makes it for me to be more positive about it.

2) When you were the Accidental Icon media influencer you lived a life others can only dream of- travelled the world first class, modeled for Valentino and Dior, appeared in Vogue, and then you pulled back from that heady and ultimately unfulfilling experience. I ask you now, who do you really want to be visible to and why?

I think we have these two, opposite representations of ageing in the media. On one hand, we have this decline narrative where. You’re going to have dementia, you’re going to be disabled, you’re going to have chronic illnesses, you’re going to be a care burden you’re ruining the generations that are coming after you because you’re taking up all their money etc.

And then on the other hand now, we have this new version of ageing. I’ve been watching it emerge. Which is you’re kind of ageless. You’re highly resourced, you’re perfectly fit, you’re running marathons at 90, you’re doing whatever you want to do, and it’s as if you’re still young. And I think what’s dangerous about that is that the vast majority of people ageing are in the middle of those two extremes. One extreme is total dependence. The other is complete independence.

But most of us are in the middle,  probably 90 percent of us are in the middle, and I think what’s dangerous about this notion that we don’t need anything, or that everything has to be about curing our diseases, or trying to intervene in providing medical care, is that policymakers and innovators are either going to think we don’t need anything, or that all the innovation should be about our physical body. And that means that the needs of us in the middle are not going to be getting met in creative ways.

What I would like to see happen is that we’re really showing more of those people in the middle. What I’m finding is that you can be extraordinarily creative and have a very rich life without having to have the perfect body or the perfect bank account. I would really like to be visible to those people in the middle. Maybe that’s part of wearing the denim and having an ordinary life (now), I want all of those women to be seen. So that’s who I want to be visible to.

I’ve done this little experiment with younger women who I know, and who have been saying, Oh, I liked your book. I say, ‘Well, what are you doing now to prepare yourself to be old?  I want you to do me a favour and create mood boards for everything in your life. Make a mood board for who you want to be as an older woman.”

We’re never invited to fantasize about our older self. I think if I had been able to do that, like during those times in my life where I was really pressured, and I didn’t have time for me where I kind of lost myself, like in the midst of raising kids and making my career. If I had known that I was going to publish a book when I was 70, I could have comforted myself. I could have said: All right, take a breath. You’re in this now. You put your little dream up on the shelf, but it’s going to come down and it’s going to come out and you’re going to have it. And so, I’m encouraging all young women to start making mood boards of who they wish to be as an older woman in their life.

 like dreams deferred?

Right. Yes.

3) Imagine that your beloved new/old house is on fire. It’s only a pretend fire. Don’t worry. And you can grab three pieces of clothing. Which three would you grab and why?

I have this very beautiful, long, to the floor silk. Yohji Yamamoto coat. I would take that. I would take my overalls, which I am obsessed with at the moment, and I would take this piece that was especially designed for me by I’m not remembering her name, but it’s a beautiful silver brocade jacket. I would probably take those three.

Is the Yamamoto coat black?

Of course

You can read the rest of my edited written interview here on 26, or listen to the whole interview here on my new podcast Elena Meets the Author, where I get to have real conversations with the people I admire. I hope you enjoy it.

March, 2024

The post Q&A with Lyn Slater, How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon appeared first on Elena Bowes.

“Ben Souther just kissed me….”

As Brodeur said, she went to sleep a daughter and woke up her mother’s confidante and collaborator, helping orchestrate a monumental affair between her mother and her mother’s husband’s best friend.

“What I’ve learned from the best memoirs,” wrote Brodeur, who is also Executive Director of Aspen Words,” is the life you’ve lived matters less than your consciousness about that life.”

If you like this memoir as much as I did, then you’ll be thrilled to hear that Brodeur has signed a deal with Netflix with Chernin Entertainment producing, Nick Hornby writing the script, and Deniz Gamze Erguven slated to direct. Below are my questions for Brodeur.

I love this quote from author Vivian Gornick that you’ve referred to in past interviews- “In order for the drama to deepen you must show the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the victim.”  Why do you think your mother was so lonely? And you, so cunning?

That quote served as a constant reminder that I did not want “Wild Game” to be a black and white, “Mommie Dearest”-style memoir, portraying one character as the monster and the other as the innocent. I wanted to show our relationship with all its complexities – full of the beauty and ugliness inherent in any close relationship. The goal was to tell the truth.

What was the most difficult part of writing this book? 

All of it and none of it. Because I had decades to process the events of my childhood, when I finally understood how I wanted to tell my story – straightforward as a memoir — the writing came easily. I am lucky in that I find the act of writing, of finding the rights words to express my thoughts and feelings, deeply satisfying.

The most fun?

I had the most fun writing the cooking scenes, which reminded me of how dynamic and creative my mother was in the kitchen, where she most came to life.

The rest of our Q&A can be read here, on UK site 26.

May, 2022

The post Q&A with Adrienne Brodeur, author of Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover and Me appeared first on Elena Bowes.

about his latest book, Fierce Poise, an exciting ride through the 1950’s New York art scene, as well as a fascinating portrait of maverick abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler. My Q&A is below:

• Helen and your life crossed paths but you never actually met, a regret, you write in your book about Helen and 1950’s New York. What would you most have liked to say to her, if you had met?

I’d like to tell her how much I enjoy her art. A feeling of life on the wing, momentary sensations. The direct fearless, ecstatic portrayal of our feelings and the world in combination.

• Helen’s father died when she was very young- age 11. You suggest in your fascinating book that his premature death may have been what led Helen to become a serious painter. Please elaborate.

I think art saved her, art was a lifeline. Perhaps her absolutely steadfast devotion to art, and her very unusual seriousness about pursuing a career as an artist which started when she began to emerge from a crisis in adolescence owes something to that, the tenacity with which she overcame the darkness, found that which was beautiful, that which was light, that which offered a feeling of the quiver and excitement of being alive owed something to her father’s death.

• Can you explain Jackson Pollock’s influence on Frankenthaler?

Walking into the exhibition at Betty Parson’s gallery of his big drip paintings, as Helen said, it was a real moment of revelation for Helen because it said, anything is possible. Your imagination can be let loose. You don’t need to inhibit your creativity by making imitations of Picasso. There is another outlet for what you have inside you. You could put it under the word genuineness or fearlessness-some  kind of art that would explode upon the eye, a ferocious, gorgeous immediacy that felt right and true to her.

As Helen said, it was like she suddenly landed in Lisbon and didn’t speak Portuguese but she wanted  desperately to learn the language.

• And why, do you think, Pollock’s death was a release for her?

Although people were horrified and saddened by Pollock’s death, his death opened up the field for a lot of these artists, where this very imposing figure was no longer around. Many artists, not just Helen, tended to make some pretty extraordinary work in the time that followed.  My favorite paintings of Helen’s are almost all of them from after Pollock’s death.

• What are some of your favourites?

In the book I talk about Eden from 1956, Jacob’s Ladder from ’57, Before the Caves ‘58, Mother Goose Melody ‘59. There’s something even more direct and memorable, grand and intimate in these paintings as compared with the paintings she made in the first half of the decade.

No painting (no creative effort of any kind) is good intellectually”- What did Helen mean by this?

If you or I go to a museum, we’re looking at some big 17^th c. painting of a hunt or a religious scene, we might want to read the label next to it, and nod our head, but that’s small change. The real thing is the blast of the thing on the eye where it knocks you back without you even knowing who painted it or what the subject is or theme.

You can’t take your eyes off the horse in the foreground with the white mane. Or the fox snarling while the man with the spear tries to stab it. You can’t believe the bristling fur on the fox’s back. Helen would say, ‘That painting is terrific.’ And her much more bookish friend Sonya Rudikoff would say, ‘No, I want to learn about the politics of the time, the story of the artist.’ That was their dispute. All that stuff that Sonya was interested in was secondary (to Helen).

Her charge was meant to stay and stay, to unfold itself  after repeated viewings and gradual contemplation.” What did Helen’s nephew Clifford Ross mean by that?

The stay and stay – a good work of art is one that you don’t get tired of looking at. A bad work of art is one that you feel like you get it already, you don’t need to see it ever again.

The trick in making something in that Pollock-like spontaneous way is that you’re constantly judging what you’re making, and one of the things you’re assessing is how fresh it is and how enduringly fresh it can remain.

A great poem or a great passage in a novel, these are the things that only increase in mystery the more we know them. Whereas the vast bulk of representations whether in the so-called fine art world or popular culture they’re meant to be consumed in a moment and there’s nothing left of them because we “get it”.

         Can you tell us something surprising about yourself? 

(The American photographer) Diane Arbus was my aunt.

Thank you so much Alex, and for the rest of you, the remainder of my Q&A with Alex can be found here on 26. Enjoy!

October, 2021

The post Q&A with Alexander Nemerov – Fierce Poise – Helen Frankenthaler and 1950’s New York appeared first on Elena Bowes.

Bestselling author Jasmin Darznik’s third novel

is a captivating read. Its 333 pages bring to life the heyday of 1920’s San Francisco bohemia as seen through the eyes of legendary photographer Dorothea Lange. Darznik focuses on Lange’s early life and friendships before she was famous. Below is my Q&A with the Bay Area-based writer.

I want to be a photographer and my mother said, you have to have something to fall back on. I didn’t want anything to fall back on. I knew it was dangerous to have something to fall back on.’ Dorothea Lange

What did she mean?

This is based on an actual quote from Lange. I think what she meant is that having a back-up plan can stop you from doing the thing you most want to do. She herself actually did have something to fall back on (she earned a teaching credential), but she dispensed with it quickly to pursue photography. It wasn’t at all prudent, but she essentially created this mindset in which failure was not an option.

How did Lange’s early life as a portrait photographer taking pictures of high society San Franciscans 

prepare her for her later grittier depression-era documentary work?

On the face of it, these two bodies of work seem irreconcilable, but those early years as a portrait photograph honed her technical skills as well as those “soft skills” of establishing rapport with her sitters. During the Depression she shifted her focus to people who’d rarely been considered important enough to be the subject of portraits, but in doing so she was able to draw from her many years of working one-on-one with clients as a portrait photographer.

You have written three books – The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life, Song of a Captive Bird about the rebellious, feminist Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad and most recently The Bohemians. All three novels center on real-life women who struggled and fought to overcome societal challenges. Your Iranian family emigrated to the Bay Area when you  were just five, and faced many challenges. Do you think your experience of being an outsider helped you to become a writer?

 Absolutely. Immigration is a profoundly unsettling experience. It trains you to be a “first-class noticer,” which was Saul Bellow’s requirement for a writer. I never feel entirely at home anywhere—except in books and writing. I truly feel that writing saved my life. It’s a place where being an outsider isn’t just tolerated, but useful.

In discussing Song of a Captive Bird, you said, ‘an exemplary life doesn’t have to be a perfect life. An exemplary life is one that blasts open our sense of what is possible.” How would you apply that quote to Dorothea Lange?

Lange made some hard choices. To do the kind of work she did, when she did it and at the caliber she did it, she couldn’t align herself with the demands that have traditionally been placed on women. She was, by her own admission, an imperfect mother. At the same time, her work broke radical ground, and generations of photographers have found their way forward by the path she forged.

Your book has many eerie parallels with today- the Spanish flu was raging, anti-immigrant sentiment, nationalistic fervour, Chinese hate crimes were on the rise, even the roaring twenties could be making a comeback. History seems to be repeating itself. Was it unsettling doing the research for The Bohemians?

It could be unsettling at times, but with respect to anti-immigrant sentiments and hate crimes, it wasn’t surprising. I often think about what Faulker said about the past being neither dead, nor the past. If you are an immigrant or a person of color, there’s never been a time when those stories haven’t been happening.

You can read the rest of my interview with Darznik here at 26, to inspire the love of words.

June, 2021

The post Q&A w Jasmin Darznik, Author of The Bohemians- a Super Summer Read appeared first on Elena Bowes.