Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Identity Unknown
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.donnaseaman.com/
CITY: Chicago
STATE: IL
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-books-0925-donna-seaman-booklist-identity-unknown-20160921-story.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 00038131
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n00038131
HEADING: Seaman, Donna
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100 1_ |a Seaman, Donna
670 __ |a In our nature, 2000: |b CIP t.p. (Donna Seaman)
670 __ |a In our nature, 2002: |b CIP t.p. (Donna Seaman) data sheet (b. 1955)
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PERSONAL
Born 1955.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author and book reviewer. Producer, host and founder of Open Books podcast. Also led classes under Northwestern University, Columbia College Chicago, and University of Chicago.
AWARDS:Literacy Hero Award, Literacy Chicago; Humanities Service Award, Studs Terkel; Writers Who Make a Difference Award, Writer Magazine; James Friend Memorial Award; grants from Illinois Arts Council.
WRITINGS
Senior editor, Booklist. Contributor to periodicals, including Creative Nonfiction, TriQuarterly, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune. Also contributor to American Writers and Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature.
SIDELIGHTS
Donna Seaman’s career has long been intertwined with the production and consumption of books. She works with Booklist under the title of senior editor, and has contributed her own writing to various publications, including Creative Nonfiction and Chicago Tribune. She also runs an audio show titled Open Books.
Identity Unknown
Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists serves as a dossier of female artists throughout the United States. All of them hold a status of relative obscurity in terms of American popular culture and awareness. Seaman has picked every one of these artists based on her own knowledge of and personal connection with their work and craft, and spends the book discussing the biographies of the artists and their works at length. The book was borne out of Seaman’s personal passion for art and those who create it. The artists profiled within Identity Unknown include Lenore Tawney, Louise Nevelson, Christina Ramberg, and Gertrude Abercrombie, among others. Seaman also delves into each of these artists’ lives, as well as what influenced their individual works.
Library Journal reviewer Kathryn Wekselman expressed that Identity Unknown “will fill a hole in the received record.” She added that the book is “most useful for research and specialty art collections.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews wrote: “This is a decidedly important and long-overdue showcase.” In an issue of Booklist, Bill Ott remarked: “No one writer can reveal the identities of all the unfairly unknown or too-little-known women artists, but for those willing to do the work, Donna has shown the way.”
Writers on the Air
Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books is one of Seaman’s earlier works, informed by her line of work and interest in literature. It is formatted in a similar vein to her Open Books show, and much of its content comes directly from the conversations featured on her program. The book is wholly encompassed of interviews with various authors about their works, their daily lives as writers, and similar subjects. The majority of the authors featured in the book pen fiction novels, and possess varying degrees of experience. Seaman speaks with such authors as Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, Mice McDermott, and T.C. Boyle, as well as several others. Each author brings their own concept of how writing works and what it means to them, as well as the themes they broach within their works. Each author is divided up into different categories based on different, shared elements. Seaman and the authors featured in her books also discuss how literature is perceived by our culture as a whole. In the process of talking to the authors, Seaman also imparts some of her own thoughts on book, writing, and the creative methods of authors as a whole.
Brad Hooper, a contributor to Booklist, called the book “a rich and revealing compilation.” He added: “Librarians will be pleased to see that Donna adds a readers’-advisory dimension to her book with several ‘Related Reading’ lists on topics such as ‘First-Time Novelists,’ ‘Genre Crossers,’ and ‘The Art and Intent of Creative Nonfiction.'” In an issue of The Writer, Erika Dreifus stated: “It’s clear in reading each conversation that she knows what she’s talking about; she’s always done her homework and, even better, it seems she’s always loved the job.” Library Journal reviewer Lee Ehlers remarked that the book is “highly recommended for public and academic libraries.” A Publishers Weekly contributor commented: “This volume gives a refreshingly various portrait of both the writers’ personalities and the writing process.” On the Bookslut website, Colleen Mondor said: “I’m so glad that I now have this wonderful resource so I can discover for myself some of the books that Donna Seaman has clearly loved for so very long.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 1, 2005, Brad Hooper, “On your wavelength,” review of Writers on the Air: Conversations About Books by Donna Seaman; November 1, 2016, Bill Ott, “Books by Booklist authors: Donna Seaman’s Identity Unknown,” review of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists, p. 23.
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2016, review of Identity Unknown.
Library Journal, September 1, 2005, Lee Ehlers, review of Writers on the Air, p. 142; December 1, 2016, Kathryn Wekselman, review of Identity Unknown, p. 95.
Publishers Weekly, July 18, 2005, review of Writers on the Air, p. 203; November 7, 2016, review of Identity Unknown, p. 51.
Writer, November, 2005, Erika Dreifus, “Listening in on accomplished writers,” review of Writers on the Air, p. 48.
ONLINE
American Writer’s Museum, http://americanwritersmuseum.org/ (July 26, 2017), author profile.
Bookslut, http://www.bookslut.com/ (January 1, 2006), Colleen Mondor, review of Writers on the Air.
Chicago Tribune Online, http://www.chicagotribune.com/ (September 21, 2016), Kevin Nance, “Editor for Booklist discusses her upcoming work, Identity Unknown.”
Conversations and Creative Women, http://sandikleinshow.com/ (July 26, 2017), Chad Dougatz, “Donna Seaman, Author and Editor,” author interview.
Los Angeles Festival of Books, https://festivalofbooks2017.sched.com/ (July 26, 2017), author profile.
Women and Children First, http://www.womenandchildrenfirst.com/ (July 26, 2017), author profile.
Write Now Coach, http://writenowcoach.com/ (March 28, 2017), Rochelle Melander, “Writers@Work: An Interview with Donna Seaman.”*
Donna Seaman has degrees in the fine arts and English. An editor at Booklist, she reviews books for the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, among others. She has written bio-critical essays for the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature and American Writers, and has published in TriQuarterly and Creative Nonfiction. Seaman created, hosted, and produced Open Books, a radio program about outstanding books and writers and the art of reading. She lives in Chicago.
Editor for Booklist discusses her upcoming work, 'Identity Unknown'
Donna Seaman is editor of adult books at Booklist. (Donna Seaman)
Kevin Nance
Chicago Tribune
When they hear that Donna Seaman is preparing to publish a book about female artists, most people assume that means literary artists, otherwise known as writers. Seaman is, after all, one of the best-known literary critics in Chicago. And as editor of adult books at Booklist, she wields significant influence over the book-buying habits of consumers — including librarians, booksellers and general readers — around the country.
But no. In fact, Seaman's new book, "Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists" (Bloomsbury, due in February), is about visual artists, not writers.
ADVERTISING
"It's a running joke," she said with a laugh at her office at the Chicago-based American Library Association, which publishes Booklist. (Full disclosure: I wrote reviews for Booklist, with Seaman as my editor, several years ago.) "Everybody thinks it's a book about writers, and I've even caught myself introducing it that way."
It turns out that the author, so closely associated with the world of books, has lived something of a double life. Her mother was a visual artist, and Seaman once wanted to follow in her footsteps, preparing herself for a career in the field by attending the Kansas City Art Institute. In later years, after she'd veered in a more literary direction, Seaman continued to be fascinated by art and artists, in particular those of her own gender.
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'Identity Unknown'
"Identity Unknown" by Donna Seaman (HANDOUT)
It made sense, therefore, that when she was deciding on the topic for a book about a decade ago, she landed on the idea of a series of profiles of female artists, many of whom had struggled to gain traction in a field dominated by men and, in some cases, had languished in relative obscurity.
In the end, Seaman wrote seven full-length profiles, all of 20th century artists (Gertrude Abercrombie, Joan Brown, Lois Mailou Jones, Ree Morton, Louise Nevelson, Lenore Tawney and Christina Ramberg), two of which were published in TriQuarterly, a literary magazine published at Northwestern University. Two of the artists, Abercrombie and Ramberg, were Chicagoans, the latter considered part of the Hairy Who, a group of local artists associated with the Hyde Park Art Center.
"I identified strongly with all of them, in part because they were all clearly caught between the two worlds of domestic life and art — and having tried to be an artist myself, I had faced many of those challenges," Seaman says. "And while I realize that male artists — I know a lot of them — face a great deal of obstacles in the art world, women, especially looking back to the last century, had an even more difficult time being accepted and recognized as serious artists."
That struggle, which in some cases entered the artists' work as a subject, either subtly or overtly, also helped form their character, making them even more determined to pursue their artistic visions despite the art world's prejudices against them because of their gender. "It added some drive," Seaman says, "to what was already an obsessive calling."
"Identity Unknown" unearths a trove of new information about the lives and careers of the artists, including Jones, associated with the Harlem Renaissance, and Tawney, whose pioneering combinations of art and craft anticipated much of the multimedia work in the contemporary art world but at the time were widely viewed as separate (and highly unequal) genres.
The book will include an insert with color reproductions of the artists' work, along with black-and-white reproductions sprinkled strategically in the text. This is a source of special satisfaction for Seaman, who spent vast amounts of time scurrying about navigating the often multilayered permissions process with the artists' estates.
"Scurrying isn't the word," she said with a laugh.
Kevin Nance is a Chicago-based freelance writer and photographer.
Donna Seaman
Donna Seaman is a Senior Editor for Booklist, a freelance reviewer, and essayist. The recipient of Illinois Arts Council grants, Seaman has received the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, the Writer Magazine Writers Who Make a Difference Award, several Pushcart Prize special mentions, the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, and Literacy Chicago’s Literacy Hero Award, in recognition of all that she does to encourage reading. The National Book Critics Circle named Donna Seaman as a finalist for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Seaman is the creator of the anthology In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness, and her author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books. Seaman has taught and lectured at the University of Chicago, Columbia College Chicago, and Northwestern University.
Donna Seaman, Author and Editor
BY CHAD DOUGATZ POSTED MARCH 14, 2017 IN ART, AUTHOR, PODCAST, WRITING 0
You’re about to meet Donna Seaman, Editor of Adult Books at Booklist and award-winning author. Her passions for art and literature have always been connected – she’s written numerous art books reviews, and has taken that a step further with “Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists”. Basically ignored by the art world, Donna introduces us to these talented landscape painters, water colorists, sculptors, who, without recognition or nurturing, never stopped creating. Listen in as Donna shares their stories and her own.
Seaman is Editor, Adult Books, Booklist, member of the advisory council for the American Writers Museum, and recipient of the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award. She has reviewed for the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, among others. She has written for the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature and American Writers. Her author interviews appear in "Writers on the Air," and her book is “Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven
28 Mar 2017Author Interviews0
Writers@Work: An Interview with Donna Seaman
March 28, 2017
Note From Rochelle
Dear Readers,
Last week we talked about how to shed what doesn’t work, shift to new practices, and take a single step in a positive direction. If you tried the assignment and struggled—you’re normal! We must work at this: shedding old habits and shifting to new practices. Here’s the thing: we build strength through the struggle. Every time we fail and try again, we build new muscles. We learn what works and what doesn’t. And over time, we move forward. Yeah for that!
For today’s tip, I interviewed Donna Seaman, author of the new book Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven Women Artists. Seaman will talk about her book at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee on Thursday, April 27 at 7:00 PM. If you live in the Milwaukee area—consider attending: this should be an inspiring evening!
Enjoy!
Rochelle
The Write Now! Coach
Writers@Work: An Interview with Donna Seaman by Rochelle Melander
Welcome to the Write Now! Coach blog. I’m excited for your new book, Identity Unknown. Can you talk about how it came about?
Identity Unknown brings together my passions for books and visual art. Even when I was making art—I have a B.F.A., I read and wrote all the time. My literary side pushed me to earn an M.A. in English, and I found my way to Booklist, the review magazine published by the American Library Association, where I review books about art and artists along with nonfiction about many other subjects, poetry, and fiction. I also reviewed books for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. But when it came to my own writing, I wanted to do something different. So I turned to my other obsession, visual art; to a literary form I’ve always loved, the biographical essay or profile, and to a subject I felt strongly about: the lives of women artists.
What drew you to write about the lives of these seven women in particular?
Each of these brilliant and daring twentieth-century artists achieved success during her lifetime. Each exhibited and sold their work; their shows were reviewed; they were interviewed by journalists; museums acquired their sculptures and paintings. But soon after their deaths, they faded from public view. Critics and art historians overlooked them, and museums put their work in storage. I wanted to tell their stories and call attention to their art to counter this neglect.
What did you learn about what drove these artists to make art during a time when women were primarily subjects instead of makers?
The need to make art is a mysterious and powerful force, and it impelled these women artists to reject gender expectations and take control of their lives so that they could devote themselves to their work. They were individuals of profound conviction and highly original vision. Everything else in their lives had to accommodate their drive to create, and this complicated marriages and, for most of them, motherhood. For these seven artists, life and art were inextricably entwined.
When you studied the work habits of these artists, what did you learn that inspired or encouraged you as a writer?
I was very moved by the depth of their commitment, by the consistency of their discipline, by their many sacrifices, and their perpetual sense of both mission and adventure. They always pushed themselves to try new approaches, to seek fresh perspectives and experiences, to risk all to keep exploring, experimenting, perfecting.
What are you reading now?
I’ve been reading a lot of fiction lately. I highly recommend a debut short story collection, What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky, by Lesley Nneka Arimah, and the first novel by the brilliant essayist Elif Batuman, The Idiot.
Donna Seaman is Editor of Adult Books at Booklist, the editor of In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness, a member of the advisory council for the American Writers Museum, and a recipient of the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award. She has reviewed for the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, among others. She has written biocritical essays for the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature and American Writers. The National Book Critics Circle named Seaman as a finalist for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. Seaman has been a writer-in-residence for Columbia College Chicago and has taught at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Her author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books, and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists. Seaman lives in Chicago. Visit her online at her website or on Twitter,
Seaman, Donna. Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven
American Women Artists
Kathryn Wekselman
Library Journal.
141.20 (Dec. 1, 2016): p95.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Seaman, Donna. Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists. Bloomsbury. Feb. 2017.480p. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN
9781620407585. $32; ebk. ISBN 9781620407608. FINE ARTS
This book presents seven 20th-century American women artists who achieved critical success while active, but who are not much known today.
Arguably, Louise Nevelson is really not forgotten, but the other six painters and sculptors likely will be unfamiliar to most readers: Gertrude
Abercrombie, Lois Mailou Jones, Ree Morton, Joan Brown, Christina Ramberg, and Lenore Tawney. Seaman (editor, adult books, Booklist;
Writers on the Air) provides a loosely constructed biographical sketch of each artist, incorporating snippets of interviews, journal entries, art
journalism, and other primary sources. Her writing is more idiosyncratic than academic in tone, at times using incomplete sentences, poetic
passages, and strings of examples and descriptors. Seaman describes many important artworks in text, but the book includes frustratingly few
reproductions, severely limiting the ability of readers to appreciate or form an impression of the artists' work. Those who want to view the art will
need to find other sources. VERDICT This primarily non-visual approach to art history, focusing on relatively unknown women artists, will fill a
hole in the received record. Most useful for research and specialty art collections.--Kathryn Wekselman, Cincinnati
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Wekselman, Kathryn. "Seaman, Donna. Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists." Library Journal, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 95.
General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA472371205&it=r&asid=54b810f851f9c09dafc4a849347e28e5. Accessed 9 July
2017.
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Seaman, Donna: IDENTITY UNKNOWN
Kirkus Reviews.
(Nov. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Seaman, Donna IDENTITY UNKNOWN Bloomsbury (Adult Nonfiction) $32.00 2, 14 ISBN: 978-1-62040-758-5
Vital portraits of forgotten women artists that aim to celebrate their lives and work and to establish their permanent standing within the canon of
contemporary art.With impressive research, Booklist editor Seaman (Writers on the Air: Conversations About Books, 2005, etc.) curates a fine
retrospective on the history of women in the male-dominated world of 20th-century art. Inspired by the carelessness with which scholars would
identify group photographs of artists--famous men named, women overlooked--the author chronicles her subjects' lives in lengthy essays that fall
gently between biography and scholarly criticism. Louise Nevelson, Gertrude Abercrombie, Lois Mailou Jones, Ree Morton, Joan Brown,
Christina Ramberg, and Lenore Tawney each led rich lives of passionate pursuit, all while managing the uneven expectations hoisted upon
midcentury wives and mothers. This fine selection of artists lends the book both cultural and technical diversity. Jones, an accomplished black
painter often associated with the Harlem Renaissance, studied under Rodin in Paris and embraced her African heritage while facing racial
prejudice at home. Tawney worked exclusively in fiber, weaving tapestries in New York City while friends Agnes Martin and Robert
Rauschenberg worked nearby. Abercrombie, queen of the Chicago jazz scene and painter of mesmerizing works, appears in photographs
alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Rollins. Ramberg's sensual graphics can be found not only in analyses of the Chicago Imagists, but also in
the pages of Playboy in the 1970s. Seaman exuberantly portrays each highly accomplished woman as the inspirational force she was, and she
does a service by bringing them back into contemporary discourse. Unfortunately, the author too often lets her excitement carry her away, running
lists of adjectives and too many descriptions on top of one another. This results in clumsily executed passages--e.g., Brown's "slapped, sloshed,
slashed, layered, kinetic canvases" and Abercrombie's "bewitching, enigmatic, elegant, awkward, eerie, funny, clever, sad, anguished, teasing and
playful" paintings.Seaman's frequent thesaurus-leaning renders her portraits overpainted, but despite its awkward turns, this is a decidedly
important and long-overdue showcase (two 16-page color inserts).
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Seaman, Donna: IDENTITY UNKNOWN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469865806&it=r&asid=e536dba776780a084496db7f2df9da4d. Accessed 9 July
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469865806
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Books by Booklist authors: Donna Seaman's Identity
Unknown
Bill Ott
Booklist.
113.5 (Nov. 1, 2016): p23.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists. By Donna Seaman. Feb. 2016.480p. Bloomsbury, $32 (9781620407585); e
book $19.99 (9781620407608).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
I don't know how many times at conferences over the years librarians have told me how much they look forward to Donna Seamans reviews and
essays in Booklist. It probably won't surprise Donnas many admirers to learn that her first love, along with books, was art. "I've been an avid
reader since I first puzzled out words on a page," Donna notes, "but I've also always loved art. My mother, Elayne Seaman, is an artist, and I grew
up watching her work and attending her openings and those of her artist friends. I love both libraries and museums, and as bookish as I've always
been, I attended art school instead of college and so spent some years sculpting and painting, even though I knew in my heart that reading and
writing were more truly my calling."
Donna's reviews of art books have long been one of the special pleasures of reading Booklist, but whatever her subject, her flowing, image-rich
sentences are always composed with a painterly precision and texture, layering words upon words like a painter blends colors. How fitting, then,
that Donna brings together these two lifetime obsessions, art and literature, in her latest book, Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American
Women Artists. Always a lover of biographies and a devoted fan of the profile form, as in the New Yorker, Donna "often thought about writing
artist profiles, an impulse that became a mission as I noticed, while reviewing art books for Booklist, that many women artists whose work I
loved, and who I thought were firmly established, were being left out of art-history surveys. I also came across artists new to me about whom
little had been written. A list of potential artists began to take shape."
And what a multifaceted, fascinating list it is, both in terms of the art and the artists' lives. Donna explains her selection process this way: "The
first criteria was all-out love for their work. The best-known artist in the book, Louise Nevelson, was a favorite of mine as a girl, and I was
shocked to find her so neglected after her death. I was immersed in weaving and fiber arts in high school and found my way to Lenore Tawney,
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who was also an amazingly fine and witty collagist. I learned about the incredibly evocative Chicago artists Gertrude Abercrombie, Christina
Ramberg, and Ree Morton, who taught here briefly, when I moved to Chicago. I knew a lot of people at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago, so I met Christina Ramberg, and I thought about writing about her ever since her early death, in 1995.1 first saw work by Lois Mailou
Jones at the Milwaukee Art Museum and was instantly intrigued. And a book I reviewed for Booklist introduced me to the immensely gifted and
intrepid Joan Brown."
Like many nonfiction writers who revel in the opportunity to dig deeper, Donna found the research to be the most enjoyable part of writing her
book. Asked to tell us a couple of her favorite research experiences, she responded enthusiastically. "I had the writer's dream experience when I
took the train to Springfield, Illinois, and spent two days at the Illinois State Museum, where I was allowed to work my way through flat files and
enter the large, basement vault to handle and study original works by Gertrude Abercrombie. It was thrilling to see her paintings so intimately."
"Another exciting research trip," Donna continues, "took me to New York City and the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation, where the director kindly
showed me an array of Tawney's fiber art pieces and some of the regal clothes she made and allowed me to read a stack of Tawney's notebooks."
Some of her research, on the other hand, didn't require road trips. Just down the hall from the Booklist offices sits ALA's Headquarters Library,
where Donna examined microfilm on interlibrary loan from "the treasury that is the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. Many a night I sat
and rolled through these reels in the library, after the staff kindly showed me how to thread that old-fashioned resource through the hardware that
was linked to software that brought the often dusty, dim, crooked images to the screen."
In the introduction to these seven revealing profiles, Donna notes that, as a student reading art histories, she was often frustrated by photographs
of famous artists (Max Ernst, Jackson Pollack, or Mark Rothko) hanging out with one another in bars or posing in studios. Often there was a
woman in those photographs, too. But who was she? "The reader," Donna says, "leans in, curious about her, only to find the tag: 'identity
unknown.'" No one writer can reveal the identities of all the unfairly unknown or too-little-known women artists, but for those willing to do the
work, Donna has shown the way.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Ott, Bill. "Books by Booklist authors: Donna Seaman's Identity Unknown." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2016, p. 23. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471142784&it=r&asid=440a4343927cecb3272d1091fe0409f6. Accessed 9 July
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471142784
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Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women
Artists
Publishers Weekly.
263.45 (Nov. 7, 2016): p51.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists
Donna Seaman. Bloomsbury, $32 (480p) ISBN 978-1-62040-758-5
Booklist editor Seaman (Writers on the Air: Conversations About Books) highlights the lives and work of seven "underappreciated" women
artists from the 20th century, but sloppy writing and a lack of focus undermine this slice of art history. For one, Seaman's selection is highly
personal--she explains that she chose "to write about artists whose work has deeply affected {her}"--but the biographical sketches are framed
around a broad notion of obscurity. This feels less than apropos when discussing Louise Nevelson, an artist with a New York City plaza named
after her. The biographical sketches of the other artists--Gertrude Abercrombie, Joan Brown, Lois Mailou Jones, Ree Morton, Christina Ramberg,
and Lenore Tawney--are undermined by overwrought writing and disjointed stories. Seaman also has a habit of including random facts without
further explanation of their significance. For example, Seaman attributes Jones's scholarship to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to
her athletic ability without any explanation as to why an art school would be interested in a student's athleticism. Elsewhere she writes that Brown
learned from the experience of teaching at a private school, but fails to explain how. Occasionally photographs will show one of the artists with
their work in the background, but there aren't many images of the actual work. Instead, readers must often rely on written descriptions, which
makes Seaman's book even harder to penetrate. B&w photos. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists." Publishers Weekly, 7 Nov. 2016, p. 51. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469757523&it=r&asid=5f2a66d9e37c34bf1ea40978dc616523. Accessed 9 July
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469757523
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On your wavelength
Brad Hooper
Booklist.
102.1 (Sept. 1, 2005): p45.
COPYRIGHT 2005 American Library Association
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Full Text:
It all began at lunch. A few years ago, Donna Seaman brought up an idea to a longtime friend, the station manager of WLUW, a local community
radio station located on the campus of Loyola University in Chicago. During their conversation, Donna suggested that his station needed a book
program. As is always the case when anyone indicates that something new needs to be done, Donna had in effect volunteered to take on the
assignment. She created an hourlong program on which she presented essay-reviews about new books. Publishers and authors soon got wind of
her show and began asking if she ever intended to do interviews with authors. That concept intrigued and challenged Donna, and she reconfigured
the program as an hour's worth of pithy discussion with significant writers. Fortunately for book lovers across the country who are out of dial-in
range, Donna has now collected many of these author interviews into a rich and revealing compilation called Writers on the Air: Conversations
about Books (Paul Dry, $24.95, 1-58988-021-8).
Some of the well-known authors who have sat down to exchange ideas and information with Donna include Margaret At-wood, T. C. Boyle,
Madison Smartt Bell, Edward P. Jones, Mice McDermott, and Joyce Carol Oates. When asked whether some writers open up more easily than
others, Donna admits that some interviews were left out of the book because of that very reason: that getting responses was like pulling teeth, that
some writers make very shy and nervous interviewees. Some of the big names she talked to turned out to be unengaged in an interview situation;
they simply repeated their stock answers, their "shtick," as Donna calls it. The interviews she chose to include were the ones in which she and the
author quickly established a rapport.
Although her conversations with these authors have a natural flow from question to response, from one point taken to another point taken, Donna
prepares a list of questions before she enters the recording studio. She believes that preinterview preparation is the sum and substance of the hard
work her book represents. "I have to steep myself in an author's work," she says, and part of her preparation is imagining the conversation as
taking the shape of a "narrative arc," a dialogue that "begins somewhere and ends somewhere." But Donna admits she must be flexible during the
actual interview; she must be prepared to let the conversation go in a direction in which it wants to go. It is obviously a matter of finding the
balance between a mapped-out route and an enjoyable detour, a balance Donna easily achieves.
Donna mentions in one of her interviews that since she first started to read, she has used books to help her navigate through life. And it is
apparent in her interviews that that core belief is the chord she struck with all of these authors: that they, too, have used books in the same
fashion. "As I sit talking with these writers, people I revere, I am aware that they and I are bookish people, that we are kindred spirits in that
regard, that we all turned to books at an early age." That leads to an easily recognizable and spontaneous trust between her and her interviewees--
which, of course, is what leads to the smooth flow so much in evidence in the interviews.
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Librarians will be pleased to see that Donna adds a readers'-advisory dimension to her book with several "Related Reading" lists on topics such as
"First-Time Novelists," "Genre Crossers," and "The Art and Intent of Creative Nonfiction."
Hooper, Brad
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hooper, Brad. "On your wavelength." Booklist, 1 Sept. 2005, p. 45. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA137016899&it=r&asid=65ed83b0ae024df539082ea2f6364400. Accessed 9 July
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A137016899
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Listening in on accomplished writers
Erika Dreifus
The Writer.
118.11 (Nov. 2005): p48.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Madavor Media
http://www.madavor.com
Full Text:
Writers on the Air: Conversations About Books by Donna Seaman. Paul Dry Books, 467 pages. Hardcover, $24.95.
I CONFESS: I LOVE reading interviews with writers. I love to see the questions a good interviewer poses, and I love to read the answers,
discovering something more substantial about a writer's craft and practice than what time of day he or she sits down to write. And yes, I love the
sense of "eavesdropping." So this new book, a collection of Donna Seaman's conversations with writers (most of which took place when the
authors came to record an edition of Open Books, Seaman's Chicago-based radio show) was a perfect read for me. Quite possibly, it will suit you
just as well.
Seaman divides her book into four main parts. The first, "Fiction," is the largest and is further separated into five sections to accommodate
interviews with 19 writers, among them "First-time Novelists" (including Julia Glass and Edward P. Jones); those writing "Novels about Real
People" (among them Madison Smartt Bell and Anchee Min); those whose work encompasses "Worlds in Transition" (such as Margaret Atwood
and T.C. Boyle); those whose writing bridges the gaps "Between Worlds" (including Sandra Cisneros and Chang-rae Lee); and writers whose
work Seaman characterizes as "richly psychological fiction" that expertly "explicate[s] the psyche, the relentless reportage of the senses, the
interplay of memory, reverie, fantasy, thought, and feeling," thereby illuminating "Worlds within Worlds" (Alice McDermott and others).
The book then moves into "Genre Crossers." Here Seaman has collected six interviews with writers notable for their work in multiple genres,
including Alan Lightman and Colson Whitehead. In Part 3, Seaman focuses on "The Art and Intent of Creative Nonfiction" with seven more
interviews; among her subjects are Diane Ackerman and Lee Gutkind. (Seaman, who edited a fiction anthology titled In Our Nature: Stories of
Wildness, expresses a special fondness for nature writing, which she finds "the most vital form of creative nonfiction" due to "the elegance of the
prose, the sophistication of the perceptions of the authors, and the overarching significance of the subject matter.") In the book's final segment,
Seaman provides extraordinary lists of related readings to accompany each of the book's main themes.
Seaman is an experienced book critic and an editor at Booklist, the century-old review magazine published by the American Library Association.
Her reading seems encyclopedic, her questions, nuanced. In other words, it's clear in reading each conversation that she knows what she's talking
about; she's always done her homework and, even better, it seems she's always loved the job. The writers participating in these conversations
respond to her depth of familiarity with their books and the sensitive readings she has accorded them.
Although segments of any given conversation do focus, as the book's subtitle suggests, on a particular title or titles, the interviews also explore
wider issues of writing craft and practice, issues that many of us may be facing in our own work. Talking with Joyce Carol Oates, for instance,
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Seaman says: "Stories come to you in different forms and voices. I wonder how you know if you're going to write a short story as opposed to a
novel." Noting McDermott's habit of working on more than one novel at once, Seaman asks: "What are the advantages of that practice?" (For the
record, McDermott doesn't recommend this approach to anyone who's writing fiction.)
Speaking with Gutkind, Seaman asks about "the reactions of the people you write about to what you write about them, particularly family." A
similar thread appears in her conversation with Lopate, who tells her: "I think my recommendation is that, if you want to be a personal essayist or
memoirist, get a lot of friends because you're going to lose some along the way. The problem is with family members: you can't keep multiplying
your family members."
If you couldn't catch these conversations when they first aired, now you can linger over them on the page. And if you're already a radio devotee
who wants a reprise, now you can listen in again, thanks to another type of "Open Book."
Erika Dreifus writes from Massachusetts. She edits a free monthly newsletter, "The Practicing Writer." Web: www.practicing-writer.com.
Dreifus, Erika
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Dreifus, Erika. "Listening in on accomplished writers." The Writer, Nov. 2005, p. 48. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA137016090&it=r&asid=cb395ca2074ae2112941a8ea71e040c0. Accessed 9 July
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A137016090
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Seaman, Donna. Writers on the Air: Conversations About
Books
Lee Ehlers
Library Journal.
130.14 (Sept. 1, 2005): p142.
COPYRIGHT 2005 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Seaman, Donna. Writers on the Air: Conversations About Books. Paul Dry, dist. by Independent Pubs. Group. Sept. 2005. c.467p. ISBN 1-58988-
021-8. $24.95. LIT
For this collection, essayist, editor, and book critic Seaman (In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness) culled interviews from her Chicago-based radio
show, Open Books, in which she discusses the creative process and common assumptions about literature with a range of established, awardwinning,
and up-and-coming authors. As in the best author interviews that appear in the Paris Review, Seaman does not merely question her
subjects--she engages them with her infectious enthusiasm and opinions, challenging them to articulate their methods, influences, and aesthetic
judgments. In "Worlds in Transition," she talks to Alex Shakar about how he exploits the interstitial ground between full-blown sci-fi and literary
fiction; in "Worlds Within Worlds," she examines the "nexus between individual and society," noting the importance of the neighborhood as "a
crucible of the self" in Stuart Dybek's work; and in "Genre-Crossers," she tackles the creative process head-on, discussing with Edward Hirsch
the angelic and demonic forces of "artistic possession." She concludes with a look at creative nonfiction, exploring the complex and often
misunderstood relationship between nature and culture. Authors interviewed include Margaret Atwood, T.C. Boyle, Julia Glass, and Phillip
Lopate. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.--Lee Ehlers, Greenville Cty. Lib. Syst., SC
Ehlers, Lee
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Ehlers, Lee. "Seaman, Donna. Writers on the Air: Conversations About Books." Library Journal, 1 Sept. 2005, p. 142. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA136261148&it=r&asid=30d9569a93a4508f3265702a43f6cf70. Accessed 9 July
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A136261148
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Writers on the Air
Publishers Weekly.
252.28 (July 18, 2005): p203.
COPYRIGHT 2005 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Writers on the Air DONNA SEAMAN. Paul Dry, $24.95 (467p) ISBN 1-58988-021-8
In this collection of interviews drawn from her Chicago radio show, Open Books, Seaman shows herself to be a consummate book lover,
engaging everyone from first-time novelists, such as Julia Glass and Edward P. Jones, to old hands like Peter Carey, T.C. Boyle and Margaret
Atwood. Although she has a tendency to fall back on plot or the basics of character and doesn't always let a conversation grow organically, there
are times--as in a wonderfully thoughtful interview with Chitra Divakaruni and an odd and funny dialogue with the comic strip artist Lynda
Barry--when Seaman allows the writers to wax philosophical. Focusing heavily on novelists, this volume gives a refreshingly various portrait of
both the writers' personalities and the writing process, which ranges from organized and disciplined to scattershot. While devotees of what
longtime Booklist editor Seaman calls "serious literature" (as opposed to "popular fiction," a distinction she comes back to time and again) and
followers of particular writers will find much to admire here, the book suffers from its translation from spoken word to print. On the page, the
interviews lose the intimacy radio confers, that sense a listener has of being invited into a conversation, sharing a small confidence. (Sept.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Writers on the Air." Publishers Weekly, 18 July 2005, p. 203. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA134460016&it=r&asid=32dd346ec74dbb475060e65f8f0563ac. Accessed 9 July
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A134460016
HOME FEATURES REVIEWS COLUMNS BLOG CONTACT STORE ABOUT ADVERTISE
JANUARY 2006
COLLEEN MONDOR
NONFICTION
WRITERS ON THE AIR BY DONNA SEAMAN
It is painful for me to admit this, but like every other fledgling writer in the world, I have fallen prey to the impressive sounding “how to be a better writer” books that seem to show up in greater numbers with each passing year. It is odd to me that as one part of the publishing industry is decrying the future of the novel, another part is trying to convince the struggling masses that they too can turn a “sow’s ear draft into silk purse stories” or learn “everything you need to know from completing a first draft to landing a book contract.” (And no, I’m not making either one of those up.) I bought more than my share of these idiot books over the years but never in search of a magic writing formula -- I’m not that desperate -- it was more out of a longing to read about writers, and what they think and how they think and why they write. I especially like to know what prompted a writer to craft a particular story or novel --what the initial thought or interest was that drew them to that subject in the first place. Sadly, this sort of thing is rarely found on the shelves today, (Stephen King’s excellent On Writing and Julia Alvarez’s equally well done Something to Declare are exceptions that I return to all the time), but I never give up hope. When a copy of Donna Seaman’s Writers on the Air landed on my doorstep I was pretty much in heaven. After reading through the more than thirty author interviews, I’m happy to report that the book has more than lived up to my very lofty expectations.
Seaman is an editor at Booklist and the sort of reader that I completely identify with. As she writes in her book’s introduction, “My heart sinks when, on telling a book-loving friend about a brilliant and prolific living writer whose work I revere, my friend says she’s never heard of him.” I identify with this thought. It is part of why I joined Bookslut, so I could spread the word on tons of books that I know would have larger audiences, if only readers knew about them. Seaman set about accomplishing her mission to “bring as many literary writers to the attention of as many readers as possible” by starting a book show, Open Books on WLUW radio in Chicago. Writers on the Air is comprised of interviews she has conducted since her first show in 1994. It is a collection that shows just how deep and eclectic Seaman’s literary interests are and has exposed me to the thoughts of so many excellent authors that I was almost overwhelmed by how much more I wanted to read when I was done.
In an attempt to provide readers with as varied a group of authors as possible, Seaman has assigned numerous subject categories, from “First-time Novelists” to “Genre Crossers” and “The Art and Intent of Creative Nonfiction” to classify her interviewees. I did a lot of picking and choosing as I read the book, bouncing back and forth between authors such as Kate Moses and Anchee Min (“Novels About Real People”) and Barry Lopez and Diane Ackerman. The first thing I did was look for writers I recognized, so I could understand how, for example, Colson Whitehead came up with such a fascinating book as John Henry Days. (Would you believe it was cartoon about John Henry that he watched in elementary school that sparked an initial and enduring interest in the folk hero?) But the more I read about authors I was unfamiliar with, the more impressed I became about Seaman’s instincts. Through either luck or skill, she has managed to attract some of the more fascinating literary figures in America today to her show and she gets them to reveal an enormous amount about themselves and their work. As anyone who has ever seen a clip of that infamous interview between Dick Clark and Prince on “American Bandstand” knows, just because someone is talented doesn’t mean they’re willing to talk about it.
So on my list of books to read in 2006 is now Wintering by Kate Moses, Red Azalea by Anchee Min, Oxford Days by Paul West and An Unfinished Season by Ward Just. I was also deeply impressed by the interview with anthropologist and writer Wade Davis, who made a very eloquent statement about human society: “No longer can we live in isolation,” said Davis. “CNN and global media carry the disconnection between our affluence and the rank poverty of the majority of humanity to every corner of the world. The ultimate lesson is that there has to be a new global declaration of interdependence where we recognize that no longer can we live in our bounty isolated, immune from the forces of revenge, envy and desire that will inevitably come at us from those who do not share in this bounty.” And this interview was before the tsunami, and before Katrina.
Part of what makes the interviews in Writers so effective is Seaman’s amazing preparation. Because she doesn’t have the resources for producing “carefully edited interviews heard on NPR,” her interviews are broadcast in their original form. In order to be as prepared as possible, she writes out “pages of notes and questions in preparation for each interview, hoping to structure a narrative arc so that each discussion has a story line and builds toward some sort of resolution.” The exchanges are not stilted, or too formal however, Seaman admits that they have “fought back tears, determined not to derail the conversation,” and “I’ve laughed so hard I’ve lost track of what we were talking about.” This ability to engage in a thoroughly researched and intelligent give and take while also allowing spontaneity to have an important part of the conversation is what makes Seaman’s work so enjoyable to read. It is clear that she is having a good time when she conducts these interviews, and that the writers are enjoying themselves as well.
I am sure I will reread Writers again and again in the future and different authors will appeal to me over time, different insights will reveal themselves to me both as a writer and a reader. Mostly, I am thrilled to have discovered a kindred spirit in Donna Seaman and found someone who so honestly and purely loves the world of books. “One of the more maddening aspects of my work as a reviewer and critic,” writes Seaman, “is the knowledge that so very many wonderful books are published without fanfare, accorded scant critical attention and allowed to slip out of view before readers have the chance even to consider reading them.” I feel the same way, and I’m so glad that I now have this wonderful resource so I can discover for myself some of the books that Donna Seaman has clearly loved for so very long.
Writers on the Air by Donna Seaman
Paul Dry Books
ISBN 1589880218
465 pages