Polly Halliday’s on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, where Heterodoxy met for biweekly luncheons.
I’ve been blessed by my decades-long membership in a New York group called “Women Writing Women’s Lives,” which has produced extraordinary biographies of often-forgotten as well as well-known women of contemporary times and earlier. Now, of course, we meet monthly on Zoom which allows far-flung members like me to participate—and most of the New Yorkers are also now elsewhere.
Yesterday I was mesmerized by two presentations, one from Francesca Wade, author of a recently published biography about a group of women who lived, at various times, in London’s Mecklenburgh Square one hundred years ago, creating the “room of one’s own” there that Virginia Woolf wrote was essential for women writers.
The other presentation, by Joanna Scutts, was on a secret group of radical women, called Heterodoxy, that lived in New York’s Greenwich Village at about the same time. This is part of the history of that area that has never been explored and the relationships between the women who lived and worked there, with all their ambiguities and ambitions, is central to their writing. I urge you to look at the links below to learn more.
So often we women writers work alone and unsupported by other women, as has usually been my case; a neighbor woman here in Santa Fe seemed bewildered by the local book store’s announcement that the paperback of The Silver Swan, just out, and a good buy at $18 dollars compared to the hardcover.
I would love to belong to a group like the ones described in these attachments, but I am grateful to have “Women Writing Women’s Lives” as my long-time support.
I’ll be reading from The Silver Swan on Zoom for the Library at the Church of Holy Faith on March 9th at three pm mountain time. Register through the parish office at donna@holyfaithchurchsf.org before 4 p.m. on Monday, March 8.
I’ll also be reading at the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference Saturday, March 9, at three pm. Information on registering is available at this link. In both cases there will be plenty of time for questions.
[Additional resources for the subjects mentioned above: Link to the digitized Heterodoxy to Marie album. Harper’s essay on women and group biography and Blanche’s NYT review of Francesca’s book on Mecklenburgh Square.]
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