Showing posts with label Books to Read. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books to Read. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Poetry Month-Union River by Paul Marion


Bootstrap Press has just published Union River, a collection of writing spanning over 40 years by my friend Paul Marion. Poet Kate Hanson Foster has written an insightful review on the Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene blog. Do check it out.

Paul and I have been friends since the late '70s and fellow travelers in the worlds of books, words, art, and Lowell. We collaborated on South Common Haiku and hope to find another project to do together. Here's a calligraphed version of his poem Green Windows. I'll be sharing examples of his poems with my calligraphy for the next few days. The writing was done with gouache and pen and the hands with acrylic.


The book is available here.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Studio Sunday-Art Reading List


I am slowly going through my website and blog and updating it. One of my recent tasks was turning the Art Reading List into a pdf. This list is by no means comprehensive, just the books that have had a deep impact on my development as an artist. There is a link to the pdf at the bottom.

ART READING LIST

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Shunryu Suzuki

In 1982, I took a workshop with Jaki Svaren, author of Written Letters, at a calligraphy conference in Philadelphia. What I learned about letters paled in comparison to the effect of my first introduction to Zen. I bought the book immediately and it opened up my thinking about my art and my life greatly.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.


The Art Spirit
Robert Henri
In a calligraphy workshop in New York with Welsh calligrapher Ieuan Rees in 1983, I was introduced to The Art Spirit by the early twentieth century painter and teacher Robert Henri. It has offered inspiration and nourishment ever since.

An artist’s job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible.


The Shape of Content
Ben Shahn
I discovered The Shape of Content when I was teaching calligraphy at Rivier College and still feeling uncomfortable calling myself an artist. The book contains the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures that Shahn delivered at Harvard in 1956-57. I found the thoughtful analysis of what it takes to be an artist very helpful.

Art is one of the few media of expression that still remains unedited, unprocessed, and undictated. If its hazards are great, so are its potentialities magnificent.


Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
David Bayles & Ted Orland
I come back often to Art & Fear, sometimes for myself and sometimes for others, for just the right words of encouragement and perspective. They have a lot to say both about the work itself and the process of getting it out into the world.

Making art is a common and intimately human activity, filled with all the perils (and rewards) that accompany any worthwhile effort. The difficulties artmakers face are not remote and heroic, but universal and familiar.


Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke
I first read Letters to a Young Poet when I was commissioned to do a quote from it in calligraphy many years ago. When I reread it in the early 2000s, this quote about patience spoke to me and has been a source of strength ever since.

In this there is no measuring with time. 
A year doesn’t matter; 
ten years are nothing. 
To be an artist means not to compute or count... 

This quote, which ends with "Patience is all!" is the one that has been my rock. You can download a pdf to make a small scroll of it here.


The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
Twyla Tharp
I found The Creative Habit when I thought I had completed the Spirit Book Series (turned out to be a hiatus rather than an ending) and was feeling adrift. Twyla Tharp draws on her experience as a dancer, choreographer, and creativity workshop leader to present ways to bring the creative habit into the reader’s lives. She bring in stories from music, movies, books, and more. Each chapter also has exercises. The Creative Habit really helped me move on.

Everything feeds into my creativity. But without proper preparation, I cannot see it, retain it, and use it. Without the time and effort invested in getting ready to create, you can be hit by the thunderbolt and it’ll just leave you stunned.


The Gift
Lewis Hyde
The Gift was, and continues to be, most helpful as I try to understand the intersection of my work and the larger world. Hyde draws distinctions between gift and commodity economies and addresses the difficult place of art, which is fundamentally a gift, in the world of commerce. He draws on fairy tales, anthropology, and literature in an enlightening but sometimes dense exposition.

The process is always a bit mysterious. You work at a task, you work and work and still it won’t come out right. Then, when you’re not even thinking about it, while spading the garden, or stepping into the bus, the whole thing pops into your head, the missing grace is bestowed.


Art Lessons: Reflections From An Artist’s Life
Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord
Being an English Lit major and a writer of sorts, I couldn’t help but add my own two cents to the conversation. Part personal story and part reflection, this small book contains 7 essays. Each begins with a hand-lettered quote and contains hard-won truths about self-confidence and the lack thereof, patience, commitment, and the importance of learning from your own work and letting it be your guide.

We need to acknowledge that no time spent in creative activity is ever wasted. Sometimes we see it in specific ways. Bits and pieces of the past have a way of creeping into the work of the present. What was left behind as a tangent can become the basis of new work five years later. Sometimes the value is purely in the time spent with intention. Every time we become deeply immersed in our work, we break through the barrier of time into a sacred space where we lose ourselves in the creative process and gain strength, resilience, and patience. 

Art Lessons is now available at the Loom Press website.

Reading List in pdf form


Monday, February 23, 2015

The Sculptor by Scott McCloud


This is a truly beautiful book. I was familiar with Scott McCloud from his books Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics and immediately sought out his new book, The Sculptor, at the library when I saw an ad for it in the NY Times Book Review. All I knew about it when it started that it was about a sculptor and Neil Gaiman said it was "The best graphic novel I've read in years." I'm going to be very brief in my description as I loved the way book swept me up and surprised me and hope it can do the same for you. What initially attracted me was the theme of an artist's work and the question: how important is it to you to have your work seen and what price will you pay for it?


It is also a story of youth (one's twenties are now one's youth for me), love and loss. I've read it twice and will probably read it one more time before I return it. The first time I was pulled along by the force of the story; the second time I savored the details and the images. Although I wrote in Art Lessons, "If we love the work for itself more than for the result, we will find a way," I've done my fair share of struggling with the issues of getting my work out into the world. I can't say that The Sculptor gave me answers but some part of me felt changed by the experience of reading it. I try to approach my work with the most open spirit that I can. When I am alone working in the studio, I feel free. When I am dealing with the various aspects of getting my work out into the world or drift to thinking about opportunities I wish I had, I sometimes feel a knot of hardness in my heart. Thanks to Scott McCloud, it is now a little smaller.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Book Arts Tuesday-Books To Read

I always think a lot about books this time of the year as much of my holidy shopping is done in bookstores. Here's a list of 37 Books Every Creative Person (and that's us!) Should Be Reading from buzzfeed. It includes some of my favorites and ones I'm putting on my list.

And here is my much smaller list:
Susan Reading List

Book Arts Tuesday and Studio Sunday will return in the new year. The Twelve Days of Christmas posts are coming soon.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Advent, Havel, and Hope

In this season of the coming solstice and Advent, hope is a common theme. I am going to share two pieces of writing and the connection between them. The first is from my friend Bill Flug, pastor of the Wesley United Methodist Church in Lincoln, RI. He makes daily posts on the church's facebook page and I always enjoy reading them. On December 2 he wrote:

As We Start Our Day

It’s Advent! Yesterday at worship Linda and Jerry Leach lit the first candle on our Advent wreath – the candle of Hope.

It’s hard from childhood onward not to confuse hope with wishing. As children, our parents gave my sister and me three Christmas wishes and worked very hard to make them come true under our tree. I recall my happiness when it happened. I recall my disappointment when it couldn’t.

We often do wish for things to come out the way we want, but hope isn’t wishing. Hope is the deep assurance of security even when things don’t turn out as we desire. It’s the foundational feeling that we are in God’s loving hands even when what we might least want in all the world happens to us or to those we love. It’s trust that no matter how things go from day to day, we belong to God.

Pastor Bill

I had seen Bill the weekend before at a concert of Nowell Sing We Clear. We originally connected through mail and emails when the group was performing at his then church in Westford, MA. At the concert, I delivered to Bill three of my little quote booklets made from old brush practice papers.

I hadn't thought much about the brush papers until I read Bill's post and then remembered that I had used them to make a book called Havel on Hope in 1990.


Here's what I wrote about the book then:

The text comes from Disturbing the Peace by Vaclav Havel, playwright, former political prisoner and President of Czechoslovakia. The book form is based on the palm leaf books of India. Strips of bookbinder's board were covered with Japanese writing paper with abstract brush drawings. Although not intentional, the cut and paste copier text reminds me of the underground presses of Iron Curtain Czechoslovakia where photocopying was state controlled and people risked prison to copy books that could not be published.

After I had exhibited the book a few times, I made the bold move of sending it to President Havel through his publisher. Some time later, I received a treasured letter from Anna Freimanova, his personal secretary for literary and theatre matters.

Allow me please to thank you on behalf of Vaclav Havel for the letter and your beautiful rare present—the extraordinary book in that you used a quotation from "Disturbing the Peace". Mr. Havel saw his texts edited in different countries and in various arrangements, but he was very surprised and delighted with a so original work.

Here is the full quotation I used in the book:

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to do good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from "elsewhere." It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.

I have several of the little quote booklets for sale in my etsy shop.


Thursday, February 28, 2013

Thoughtful Thursday-Matisse and Pippin



What do French artist Henri Matisse and American artist Horace Pippin have in common? Both are subjects of wonderful children's picture book biographies. Both books beautifully present the joys and passion of art as well as the difficulties of living the life of an artist. There is inspiration here for adults as well as children.

Colorful Dreamer: The Story of Artist Henri Matisse by Marjorie Blain Parker, illustrated by Holly Berry

"Henri's parents loved him very much. But, sometimes, they worried about him. They worried he might end up down-and-out. Life was difficult. They worked so hard to make a decent living. And Henri was not a hard worker.He did not excel at school. He did not excel at violin lessons. He did not, in fact, excel at much of anything—except, perhaps, dreaming."







A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Melissa Sweet

"At night, he piled wood for the stove and arranged dominoes so his grandmother could play. Then if he could find scrap of paper and a piece of charcoal, he drew pictures of what he had seen that day.

Horace loved to draw. He loved the feel of the charcoal as it slid across the floor. He loved looking at something in the room and making it come alive again in front of him. He loved thinking about a friend or a pet, then drawing them from the picture in his mind."











Thursday, January 31, 2013

Thoughtful Thursday-Allen Say


With gentleness and depth, Caldecott Medal Winner Allen Say traces his beginnings as an artist in Drawing from Memory. It begins:

I was born in 1937 by the seashore of Yokohama, Japan. Our house stood near a fishing village. My parents were the children of fishermen. Mother constantly worried I might drown in the sea. She tried to keep me home.


Say apprenticed to a cartoonist, Noro Shinpei, at age thirteen when he was living in Tokyo in his own apartment(!) and going to school. The book ends when he leaves for America. I love this exchange with his Sensei:

"But I can't draw hands, Sensei. How long do I have to practice?"

"Bad word, Kiyoi. Drawing is never a practice. To draw is to see and discover. Every time you draw, you discover something new. Remember that."







Thursday, January 24, 2013

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Thoughtful Thursday-Over and Over


In both my childhood and my children's, I missed this wonderful book by Charlotte Zolotow. I was inroduced to it by a recent article in The Horn Book by her daughter, Crescent Dragonwagon. Here is how it begins:

“Once there was a little girl who didn’t understand about time.”

So, with deceptive simplicity — for who, of any age, does understand time? — did my mother, Charlotte Zolotow, begin her book Over and Over, first published in 1957.
As I write these words today, Charlotte is ninety-seven and I am fifty-nine. I see to her care. When she wrote Over and Over, she was forty-two and I was four, and she saw to mine. It is also fall, maybe her last on this green-and-gold spinning globe. At this intersection Over and Over, about cycles, seems to me celebratory, bittersweet, and comforting. Its meaning and its text — first read aloud to me by my mother before I was myself able to read — seem almost as enduring as the cycles of death and renewal themselves.


I highly recommend both the article and the book.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Thoughtful Thursday-Jonathan Hale

As I am going to hear Jonathan Hale, author of The Old Way of Seeing, speak about Newburyport Architecture on Sunday, I've been looking at his book again and reading an older post about it. Here's the paragraph the quote comes from:

The grammar of shape is innately understood. Unlike speech, it is visible in plants and animals everywhere. The intuitive design process gives access to that knowledge. You do not work at design; you play at it.


Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Book Arts Tuesday-Lupine Accordion Book


On our recent family trip to Percé, Quebec, we saw lupines all along the roadsides of Maine, New Brunswick, and the Gaspé Peninsula. I thought of the wonderful picture book by Barbara Cooney, Miss Rumphius (so beautifully told and illustrated with a great message that grows out of the story and doesn't feel forced) and knew that I would make a little memento book on my return. I made two.


For the first, I used green charcoal paper I still have from a bulk purchase when Hatfield's Art Supply in Boston closed many years ago, a cereal box, and wrapping paper from the collage box and drew the lupines with extra fine sharpie markers.



For the second I used a piece of used copy paper (writing on one side) folded in half and no cover. I put some marks with colored pencil for the background, wrote a quote from the book with a sharpie marker,



and made the lupine flowers by carving a pencil eraser with an olfa knife and coloring it with marker. The pencils were old and the carved eraser had a short shelf life, but enough to complete the book.


Video Accordion Book Directions

Written Accordion Book Directions

in Spanish

Detailed directions for purchase: Gathering of Gifts Accordion Books





Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The Magic Maker of the Revels


Reading the Magic Maker, a book about John Langstaff by Susan Cooper (author of the wonderful Dark is Rising Series as well as many other books), was an excellent way to prepare for our annual journey to the Revels in Cambridge on Friday.

When John Langstaff died in 2005, he and Susan Cooper were working on a book about his life to be called Choirboy. It became The Magic Maker: A Portrait of John Langstaff Creator of The Christmas Revels. She writes:

I joined the Revels family in 1975, after being recruited by Jack (nobody ever called him "John" for more than five minutes) backstage at the previous year's Christmas production. For the next twenty years I wrote verse, short plays, stories, lyrics, program notes, record notes, and any other words Jack felt he needed. We became working partners, linked by respect, understanding, and the pleasure of the job we were doing; we grew to know most of each other's strengths, failings, and foibles, and when he died in 2005 I lost one of my three closest friends.


The Magic Maker is beautifully written and tells the fascinating story of a young boy sent off to board at choir school at age seven, a young man serving on the Pacific front in World War II with harrowing experiences and a serious injury, a performing life, a teaching life, and then…the Revels.

The words in the book that speak most personally to me are: "a musician who found his greatest delight in making audiences not listen but sing." For many years, when I was in the midst of children and a heavy schedule of teaching in the schools, I felt pulled away from my own artwork. Now that I have more time to devote to it, it doesn't have the same attraction. While I still love doing the work, I truly mean it when I say: I would rather teach a person to make something of her own than sell her a piece of my work. I want my audience not to look, but to do.

The Magic Maker can be purchased at the Revels website.

Friday, November 04, 2011

Playful Learning

I got this book from the library after seeing a post about it on the Artful Parent. If my children were still young, I would have already added it to my library. Sections include: Nurturing Young Authors, The Joy of Reading, Mathematicians at Work, Scientific Investigations, Exploration of Art And Artists, Growing Globally, and Raising Citizens of Tomorrow. Each section has a developmental overview and a series of projects. I especially love the liberal sprinkling of lists of Books to Inspire. An extra treat was in the Bookmaking Section of Nurturing Young Authors: a mention of makingbooks.com in Web Sites to Inspire.

You can also follow the author's blog Playful Learning.

Monday, August 01, 2011

Rebel Bookseller

I met Andrew Laties several years ago at a meeting of the Independent Publishers of New England. We found that we had a common interest in book arts (unusual among publishers who are book lovers but not necessarily knowledgeable about artists' books) and had a great conversation. I intended to buy a copy of his Rebel Bookseller but didn't do it immediately and then it faded from my mind. Last week's Boston Sunday Globe had an interview with him in connection with a new edition of the book. This time I went straight to my local independent bookstore—the appropriate place to buy a book with the subtitle Why Indie Bookstores Represent Everything You Want to Fight for from Free Speech to Buying Local to Building Communities—and ordered a copy.


I have read Rebel Bookseller twice in three days. Andrew Laties has had a long career in bookselling, starting out working for B. Dalton in Chicago and going on to cofound the Children's Bookstore, the Children's Bookfair Company, The Children's Museum Store, PovertyFighters, the Eric Carle Museum Bookshop, and Vox Pop.

In Rebel Bookseller, his personal story is interspersed with Rants—ten of them—where he shares his opinions and observations of the bookselling and publishing worlds and his Rough Rules of Rebel Bookselling. He is an optimist and believes that now is a great time to open an independent bookstore. His rallying cry is loud and clear but in telling his story, we see that the road is not easy. It's long hours, hard work, and most importantly—constant adaptation and change.

If you are interested in the world of bookstores and publishing, the tactics and effect of the chains and amazon on independent bookstores, this is the book for you. If you are thinking of opening a bookstore, this is a must-read. Andrew Laties believes in the things he lists in his subtitle—free speech, buying local, and building communities. He is passionate and inspirational and realistic.

May I suggest you do what I do—check out the Rebel Bookseller on amazon if you want more information—and then go order it from your local independent bookstore.


The top image is my bookmark for Rebel Bookseller. Take a look at my youtube tutorial to learn how to make your own Bookmark Book.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Happy Birthday Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan turns seventy today. The photo was taken in Woodstock, NY at a place where Dylan stayed.

Here are two picture books—written for kids but great for adults as well. When Bob Met Woody is brand new by Gary Golio who also wrote an excellent picture book about Jimi Hendrix. Forever Young is the lyrics to the song. Great illustrations with lots of little biographical details tucked in.



Thursday, May 12, 2011

Newburyport Literary Festival Report 2011

How amazing is this—our little city of 17,000 people just had its sixth annual Newburyport Literary Festival. The choice of this year's honoree, Newburyport native and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, was occasioned by the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. This was the first year that I was not personally involved in any activity (no exhibits, no workshops, no planning meetings). I attended the opening and closing ceremonies, Dinner with the Authors, and four sessions during the day.

Compared to prior years and the pressure of installing exhibits (walls covered with student work at the Firehouse, hanging poetry strips from trees), I would describe it as a relaxing time except that my mind was so stimulated, relaxing is probably not the appropriate word. It reminds me that the world we live in is so rich with information that sometimes we just have to close our eyes and draw a deep breath.

I felt I was being ricocheted through time. Just before going I had finished reading The Party's Over by John Gruen about the New York art scene (not just visual art but music, theater, and writing) in the fifties and was getting ready to start on the new biography of the artist Lee Krasner. Opening night was a moving tribute to William Lloyd Garrison. Ellen Fitzpatrick who I feel I know from the The News Hour on PBS moderated a discussion between Lois Brown of Mt. Holyoke and Kate Clifford-Larson of Simmons College. From their years of research into Garrison and his time, they painted a moving portrait of a courageous, resolute, and warm man. Suddenly I had left New York in the fifties and was back in the nineteenth century with a list of books to read if I wanted to visit there for longer.

On Saturday, the main day of the festival, I started the morning with a talk by John Hanson Mitchell who I know from his work as editor of the Mass Audubon's newsletter The Sanctuary and his book, Ceremonial Time. As he spoke about his most recent book, The Paradise of All These Parts: A Natural History of Boston, we journeyed from early geologic time to the Big Dig. I then went to a lively, funny, and inspiring talk and reading by Aine Greaney, author of Dance Lessons (present day and the 1950s in Ireland and the US). She spoke about the book, her writing process, and what it's like to be "lunatic editor" who obsesses over every particular of language but is guided mostly by the flow and music of the written word. Dance Lessons is in my book queue after I finish with Lee Krasner. Onto Rodman Philbrick, author of the YA novel Freak the Mighty, who spoke with self-deprecating humor and wit about his development as a writer from his teenage efforts and ambitions (He sent out short stories at an early age and when they weren't accepted, decided that what would really impress them was a novel) to his life as a prolific writer of mysteries and thrillers and books for young adults. He writes four books a year and still manages to spend a lot of afternoons fishing.

In the afternoon, I went to see Howard Frank Mosher whose topic was Transforming History Into Fiction: The Story of a Born Liar—A Slide Show Talk & Reading of Walking to Gatlinburg. I had never heard of the author but as I have been giving illustrated talks, I decided that seeing how someone else did it would be of interest. It was not what I expected but funny and an absolute delight. Mr. Mosher sported a red V-neck sweater and stood by an old slide projector on the stage of the Firehouse. The picture he projected was not that large, the photographs were not that easy to see (especially from my angle where he was often between the projector and the screen), but he was completely engaging as he started with a slide of the old vehicle that had taken him around the country on book tours and research trips—the "Loser Cruiser." What a storyteller!

The Festival closed with a further celebration of the causes of William Lloyd Garrison and included a polyphonic reading of poetry by members of the Pow Wow River Poets and a melopoeia (music and poetry and song) by poets Rhina Espaillat and Alfred Nicol, guitarist John Tavano, and soprano Ann Tucker and concluded with a reading of the Gettysburg Address by Newburyport elder statesman and man with an incredible voice—Josiah Welch.

And last of all, an invitation to next year's events which will honor poetry and music, but as always present a broad range of the literary arts.

Monday, May 09, 2011

Happy Birthday Roger Hargreaves

Today is Roger Hargreaves' birthday. He's the author of the Little Miss and Mister books which were loved in this house. I remember the thrilling moment when I found a whole stack of them at the library book sale. Google has a rotating series of images today celebrating the author and the books. What fun!

Friday, March 18, 2011

Bookmark/Traditional Crafts of Ireland

Yesterday Sandy Riddell Wagner posted a link to an Irish Traditional Crafts website. It features films by David and Sally Shaw-Smith and mentioned that they also had a book with Thames and Hudson. With a little bit of the luck of the Irish, the book was on the shelf of my local library. I brought it home and spent a few hours learning about traditional ways of textiles, stonework, woodwork, willow, rush and straw work (my favorite), leather (including bookbinding), metalwork, ceramics, glassware, calligraphy (Denis Brown), and rural life. It's beautifully photographed by the Shaw-Smiths with writing by a variety of different people. A treat for St. patrick's Day. I may need to add it to my library.

Monday, March 07, 2011

A Photographer in Old Peking

I just got this wonderful out of print book through half.com. I was revisiting some of my old books to prepare for my talk at the South Carolina School Library Association and spent some time with Chinese Traditional Bookbinding by Edward Martinique. He had some illustrations from a magazine article by Hedda Morrison that appeared in the Canadian Geographical Journal in December 1949. I wasn't able to track down the article but did find her book, A Photographer in Old Peking.

Hedda Morrison was raised in Germany and in 1933, at age 25, went to Beijing to manage Hartungs Photo Studio. She lived and worked in China until 1946 and recorded the time and place through her black and white photographs. She photographed temples and palaces, street life, art and crafts, and food and entertainment in Beijing and also ventured further afield in China. In the book-related department, there are pictures of papermaking, bookmaking and selling, seal carving. The photographs are introduced by her straightforward text which gives a sense of the world she saw around her and reading between the lines, the open and intrepid spirit that she brought to her life in this foreign city.


Two places to learn about Hedda Morrison and her work are the websites of:

The Powerhouse Museum
in Sydney, Australia

Harvard-Yenching Library in Cambridge, MA

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Bookmark/ A Freewheelin' Time

This week's bookmark was chosen for a sad reason—the passing of its author Suze Rotolo. Susan, as those of us in the book arts community knew her, was a book artist. We were in several exhibits together and met some years ago at the Center for Book Arts in New York. Although I knew her only briefly, I felt an artistic kinship. When I read her book, I was filled with admiration for her as a person and a creative woman. Here's a previous blog post I wrote when the book came out:

Susan Rotolo is a book artist who was Bob Dylan's girlfriend in the early 60s when she was know as Suze Rotolo. She has written a warm and generous memoir about those days called A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. While it is very much about a time and place and a certain group of people, there is much that speaks to the journey of growing up and understanding one's place in the world as a woman, an artist, and a human being. She concludes the book by saying "The creative spirit finds a way."


Susan's Book work

NY Times obituary

Guardian obituary (I think this is most complete)

Rolling Stone remembrance (by a friend and more a sense of her as a person)

Her own voice on Fresh Air with Terry Gross

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