Biography

Acclaimed as "the first masterpiece in comic book history" (The New Yorker), Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Maus is a haunting, monumental work of history and memory. Depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, this unforgettable story contrasts the harrowing realities of the Holocaust...

 The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz. The Weight of the Earth collects the audio journals of artist, writer, and activist David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992), recorded primarily between 1987 and 1989 during the height of the AIDS epidemic. In these intimate recordings, Wojnarowicz reflects on his...

In her first work of memoir, Arundhati Roy, the acclaimed author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, turns inward to tell the deeply personal story of her relationship with her mother, Mary Roy—a fierce, unconventional, and formidable woman whose...

On the Creative Life. Sally Mann reflects on the creative process through a collection of personal stories, insights, and lessons drawn from her life and career as an artist. Blending humor, honesty, and thoughtful reflection, the book explores themes such as hard work, risk-taking,...

With a foreword by Hilton Als, this collection gathers essays written between 1968 and 2000 by the celebrated essayist and journalist Joan Didion, many of them published together for the first time. The pieces offer a revealing look into Didion’s mind and working process,...

Joan Didion, acclaimed bestselling author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean, has long kept notebooks filled with overheard conversations, interviews, essay drafts, and collected articles. Two extended excerpts from her 1970s notebooks offer a sharp and...

A powerful new English translation by Marion Wiesel brings renewed clarity to Elie Wiesel’s most renowned work: Night, a stark and deeply moving autobiographical account of his experiences as a teenager imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps. Rendered by Marion Wiesel, the author’s wife and...

The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton first met at a poetry workshop at Boston University, where an immediate connection quickly developed into a complicated rivalry fueled by both admiration and envy. In the years that followed, the...

How Modern Art Came to America. In 1939, Pablo Picasso was celebrated in Europe but widely rejected in America. Within a year, that changed dramatically. This is the story of how one groundbreaking exhibition transformed him into a cultural icon in the United States....

Murder, Betrayal, and the Making of a Monster. Whispers have long haunted the castle, the village, and the dark woods: the countess of one of Europe’s oldest families is a killer, some say bathing in her victims’ blood. When the king’s men storm her...

A Visual Biography of Theodor Seuss Geisel. The creator of Horton the Elephant, the Grinch, the Cat in the Hat, and a delightful cast of beloved children’s characters, Dr. Seuss stands as a towering figure in children’s literature. Yet he was a private individual,...

(But Some Were) Eve Babitz was never more electric than when she was writing letters. In this first-of-its-kind collection, her correspondence takes center stage, revealing the voice she wielded with unmatched charm: candid yet mischievous, glamorous yet razor-sharp, effortlessly funny and startlingly perceptive. Consider...

At the age of thirty, Amy Liptrot finds herself washed up back home on Orkney. Standing unstable on the island, she tries to come to terms with the addiction that has swallowed the last decade of her life. As she spends her mornings swimming...

BTS’s rise to fame has exceeded everyone’s wildest expectations. This boy band’s incredible journey comes alive—from their early days in South Korea, to becoming one of the world’s biggest music sensations with hits, to delivering speeches at the United Nations. For BTS, it’s all...

The Story of a Massacre in Norway and Its Aftermath On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik carried out a devastating attack in Norway, killing seventy-seven people—first with a bomb in central Oslo, then in a mass shooting at a youth camp on the...

 A Feminist History of Modern Russia from Revolution to Autocracy. Award-winning journalist Julia Ioffe tells the story of modern Russia through the women who have lived, fought, and struggled within it—from revolution to utopia to autocracy. In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family...

With over two million copies sold, The Woman in Me is the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir hailed as “moving” (Time), “powerful” (Los Angeles Times), and “radiant” (The New York Times). In June 2021, the world stopped to listen as Britney Spears spoke...

The Complete Crônicas In the rich banquet of Clarice Lispector’s work, her crônicas—short, intensely vivid newspaper pieces—are the delectable canapés. “I’ve learned enough from taxi drivers to fill a book. They really get around. Maybe I know more about Antonioni, or maybe they know more...

Long overshadowed by her marriage to Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner is now recognized as a major figure in 20th-century art—a bold innovator whose work helped shape modernism. In Lee Krasner, acclaimed biographer Gail Levin offers a richly detailed and engrossing account of an artist...

Spanning nearly the entire twentieth century—from women’s suffrage and the Great Depression to McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, and second-wave feminism—Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty tells the story of a woman who painted through every cultural shift and refused to conform...

Artist Biographies, Women in Art. Photographer Jean-François Jaussaud first met Louise Bourgeois in 1994 at her Brooklyn studio. Gaining her trust, however, was no simple matter—only after a probing interview into every detail of his life did she agree to a photo session. Their...

The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers. Based on six of hundreds of newly discovered, never-before-published autobiographies written by Eastern European Jewish teenagers on the eve of World War II—unearthed in 2017 from a church cellar in Lithuania—When I Grow Up brings to life...

Many cultural and religious traditions make space for grief, urging the bereaved to withdraw from daily life and tend to their sorrow. But in today’s world, grief is often met not with stillness, but with bureaucracy and to-do lists. That’s exactly what confronted Geraldine...

A fierce, funny, and unforgettable memoir that redefined the genre. In The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr recounts her turbulent East Texas childhood with sharp wit, raw honesty, and unflinching love. Amid the oil refineries and cigarette smoke of a small town, Karr grows up...

A lyrical and intimate memoir recounting the passionate and tumultuous relationship between Suzanne Mallouk and the renowned artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Set against the vibrant backdrop of 1980s New York City, the narrative delves into Suzanne's life as a young Canadian runaway who becomes Basquiat's...

A journey through ancient trails, wild landscapes and the quiet power of walking toward healing. When seasoned adventurer Phoebe Smith set out to walk the world-famous Camino de Santiago, she didn’t expect to lose her way—not on the trail, but in her life. Leaving...

A world-renowned composer of symphonies, operas, and film scores, Philip Glass has, almost single-handedly, crafted the dominant sound of late-twentieth-century classical music. Yet here in Words Without Music, he creates an entirely new and unexpected voice, that of a born storyteller and an acutely...

In an inspiring follow-up to her acclaimed memoir Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today’s highly uncertain world. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with readers, considering...

When Kerri and her partner M moved to a small, remote railway cottage in the heart of Ireland they were looking for a home, somewhere to stay put. What followed was a year unlike any other. Cacophony of Bone maps the circle of that...

The story of a single place in the Scottish Borders. The site on which Alistair Moffat's farm now stands has been occupied since prehistoric times. Walking this landscape you can feel the presence and see the marks of those who lived here before. But...

At the age of thirty, Amy Liptrot finds herself washed up back home on Orkney. Standing unstable on the island, she tries to come to terms with the addiction that has swallowed the last decade of her life. As she spends her mornings swimming...

The grand finale of Karl Ove Knausgaard's masterful and intensely-personal series about the four seasons, illustrated with paintings by the great German artist Anselm Kiefer. The conclusion to one of the most extraordinary and original literary projects in recent years, Summer once again intersperses...

You don’t know what air is, and yet you breathe. You don’t know what sleep is, yet you sleep. You don’t know what night is, yet you lie in it. You don’t know what a heart is, yet your own heart beats steadily in...

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and a militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, was obsessed with the ever-present threat of the corrupting evils of the Western world outside their home, and worried that womanhood would make Safiya...

In the summer of 2016, a divisive presidential election was underway, and a new breed of right-wing rage was on the rise. Emily Witt had recently quit antidepressants for a more expansive world of psychedelic experimentation. From her apartment in Brooklyn, she began to...

Full of intimate stories, from chasing down secret love affairs to battling body image and struggling with familial strife, Pageboy is a love letter to the power of being seen. With this evocative and lyrical debut, Oscar-nominated star Elliot Page captures the universal human...

In My Lady Parts, Doon shares her experience on stage, screen and in real life, examining how our culture still expects women to adhere to certain stereotypes - and punishes those who don't. Doon looks at the stories we are telling and asks: what...

Written in Water: Keats's Final Journey offers a meticulously researched and evocative account of the last five months in the life of the Romantic poet John Keats. Departing London in September 1820 with his friend Joseph Severn, Keats embarked on a journey to Italy in...

The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and most triumphant periods of his career—1958 to 1964. It is an unparalleled account of the machinations behind both John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential nomination and his decision to offer Johnson the vice...

Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic Sebastian Smee tells the fascinating story of four pairs of artists—Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, Pollock and de Kooning, Freud and Bacon—whose fraught, competitive friendships spurred them to new creative heights. Rivalry is at the heart of some of...

In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faces the heartbreaking sale of her daughter, Ashley. In a desperate bid to protect her, Rose packs a cotton bag with a few precious items for her daughter—items that would be the last connection between...