New Life for a Very Old Story

In 2010, HarperTeen published my YA novel about Alessandra Giliani, a 14th century teenager reputed to be the western world’s first female anatomist…

There’s a persistent myth in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy about Alessandra Giliani, a cross-dressed 14th century girl who defied the laws of church and state to perform anatomical research, risking being burned as a witch. For a brand-new episode of the always enlightening “Lost Women of Science” podcast (hosted by the wonderful Katie Hafner and produced in partnership with Scientific American), I was interviewed by Mackenzie Tatananni about searching for the truth behind this 700-year-old story that continues to be so thrilling and heart-breaking.

Listen here (the episode is about seven minutes long).

Scientific American picked up the interview for their Science, Quickly podcast! Consider this: Scientific American has 3.5 million print and tablet readers worldwide, 5.5 million global online unique visitors monthly, a social reach of 3.5+ million and is translated into 14 languages. Maybe if even a tiny fraction of all those people listen to the interview and want to buy the book, the powers that be at HarperTeen will decide to bring A Golden Web back into print!

Looking to get your hands on a copy of A Golden Web for yourself, your school district, or a girl who’s working her head off in medical school? The novel is only available as an ebook now. But you could write to Rosemary Brosnan, the wonderful editor at HarperTeen who shepherded my novel to publication in 2010 and has subsequently become a Vice-President and Editorial Director (c/o HarperTeen, 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019; 212-207-7000). Just saying…

I loved doing this interview with Joan Gelfand for the Jewish News of Northern California about What Disappears!

Well, 2023 has certainly been complicated so far!

A bit of personal news here…

At the end of last year, both my husband and I were laid up with one of those horrible unnamed respiratory viruses, which upended all my plans for travel and book promotion. And then, on February 15, I had a really devastating accident, breaking my left arm in two places, a really bad break requiring surgery and the insertion of quite a bit of metal in my arm. The good part of this is that it was my left arm, and I am right-handed.

It is an amazing thing how a sudden change of perspective can stimulate the imagination! There hardly seems to be enough time in every day to do all the writing I want to do now – – poetry, essays and, with luck, the start of a new novel.

I wanted to share my latest novel-sighting, at the magnificent San Francisco Opera House, where What Disappears is on display and for sale at the gift shop of the San Francisco Ballet. I did a book-signing there on April 1st, before, during, and after the matinée for their production of Cinderella!

I got my novel into the hands of so many enthusiastic book- and ballet-lovers—plus my husband and I were given the gift of two splendid seats for a performance that was visually, choreographically, and musically superb! For a time, at least, I forgot about my broken left arm—and even left my splint at home.

News & Links from 2022

My onstage interview with the lovely Ruth Thornburg as featured guest in the Friends of the Lafayette Library Sweet Thursdays Authors and Lecturers Series, talking about What Disappears. We had such a wonderful time! Here’s the video link for the recorded event.

My November 7th poetry reading in Sande Anfang’s Rivertown Poet’s Series…

Here’s an essay of mine, on ballerina Tamara Karsavina and the intersection between dancers and writers, published in Dance International Magazine.

Some photos from my October 12th event in Raleigh, NC, at beautiful Quail Ridge Books, with my friend and collaborator Gavin Larsen (Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Life in Dance) and Martha Anne Toll, author of Three Muses; Jaynie Royal and Pam Van Dyk of Regal House; and Trish Coffey, whose kindness made up for the fact that the airlines lost my luggage for the first five days of the tour…

Metro Wines of Asheville, Malaprop’s Bookstore, and the Ballet Conservatory of Asheville were co-sponsors of truly the most joyful book event I’ve ever had: a books, wine, and ballet gala to raise funds for a needs-based ballet scholarship. We had a wine-tasting, featuring Roden Wines’ multiple award-winning 2021 Pinot gris (created by my husband and his winemaking partner Lisa Bishop Forbes) as a tribute to What Disappears); a silent auction, masterminded by John Kerr, the community-minded proprietor of Metro Wines; and a gorgeous pas de deux from The Nutcracker, choreographed by the sublime Gavin Larsen and danced by two of her advanced students from the conservatory, Xavier Cacanindin and Sarah Adams. The lovely Patricia Furnish, PhD, of Malaprop’s was in charge of the signing table. Chris and Angie Lynn, the manager and director of the Conservatory, were there to cheer us on. Nearly $1,000 was raised!

Fellow Regal House writer Lily Iona MacKenzie interviewed me for her blog. I thoroughly enjoyed answering Lily’s questions! Read the interview here.

Charles Rammelkamp wrote such a splendid review of The Light on Sifnos for the London Grip Review of Poetry. Read it here!

On July 3rd (Sunday at 3:00), at the beautiful Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, I did an in-person event curated by the Library’s Executive Director Magnus Torén, hosted by poet and Library Board Member (and my dear friend) Laura Schulkind. You can listen to a deep and far-reaching conversation about writing, sailing, dancing, poetry, and the common denominator between Henry Miller and me (as well as the somewhat mystical origins of What Disappears) by clicking here.

Grace Cavalieri’s latest interview with me on May 2nd, on her wondrous and long-running program from the Library of Congress, The Poet & the Poem. An intimate, no-holds-barred conversation. Grace knows me, as a novelist and poet, better than anyone else on this planet. Click here to listen in.

Interview with Clifford Garstang, “I’ve Got Questions for Barbara Quick.” Read it here.

The Sonoma Living section of the Press Democrat published this lovely article with photos about the launch of my new novel in conjunction with the 2021 Roden Wines Pinot gris!

“One Writer’s Beginnings: The Bitter Gift of Trauma,” an essay about the origins of What Disappears.

I’m pleased to share Martha Anne Toll’s interview with me in the Washington Independent Review of Books.

Dance International Magazine published my essay about the decades-long process of writing, imagining, and researching What Disappears.

Beautiful, Magical Mendocino!

June 4th was the date of an in-person book signing and meet-and-greet at the scenic Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino, in conjunction with the Mendocino Film Festival. I returned for a live reading at the bookstore on October 27th.

Two of my poems were nominated for 2021 Pushcart Prizes: “The Mad-Carwasher of Kamares” (from The Light on Sifnos, which won the 2020 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize and was published as a chapbook by chief editor Diane Frank last April); and “Pandemic Pumpkins,” nominated by Crystal Sands, editor of the 2021 Farmer-ish Print Annual (the poem is also anthologized in Pandemic Puzzle Poems from Blue Light Press. This is a first—and a second!—for me.

What Disappears is available as a paperback at all your favorite bookstores as well as in a special collector’s edition on the Regal House website.

The in-person book launch for What Disappears was at Northern California’s landmark independent bookstore, Book Passage in Corte Madera, on May 28th—which happened to be my birthday, too! Props to the wonderful Elaine Petrocelli, Book Passage owner and founder, for the beautiful introduction she gave me—and for all my friends and readers who were there to celebrate with me and drink glasses of the special edition Pinot gris my winemaker husband, Wayne Roden, created to commemorate my new novel. It was, for this writer, an unforgettable day!

What Disappears is a gripping multi-generational tale that begins in 1880s Tsarist Russia and ends in Paris at the start of World War I. Jeannette Dupres, one of two identical twins born to a Jewish family in dire financial straits, is spirited out of an orphanage as an infant by a couple from France. The other twin, Sonya Luria, raised to believe her sister died at birth, has her life upended by the 1903 pogrom in Kishinev. The sisters are reunited in the doorway of Anna Pavlova’s dressing-room, when they both get jobs in Paris with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Sonya as a seamstress and Jeannette as an extra ballerina. In a relationship that ebbs and flows as it evolves, the twins’ deepest, darkest secrets are revealed, affecting not only them but also leaving their mark on the lives and fates of Sonya’s three daughters. Peopled by the greatest dancers, artists, writers, designers, and trend-setters of the Belle Époque, What Disappears explores the ways in which girls and women define their identity and search for meaning in a world that tries at every turn to hold them back.

Praise for What Disappears

“In What Disappears, Barbara Quick spreads before the reader a banquet of secrets, jealousy, betrayal, genius, high fashion, loss, tragedy and poignant regrets peppered with fascinating historical details and cameo appearances by some of the most famous ballerinas, writers, and artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A cinematic novel, which cuts between Russia and Paris, past and future, fear and desire, What Disappears has a rich plot filled with enough reversals, revelations, and unexpected twists to keep readers turning its pages long into the night.”

–Mary Mackey, New York Times bestselling author of A Grand Passion

“Gorgeously written and daring in scope of drama from the poverty and pogroms of Russia to the fraught, exquisite world of divine fashion and the Ballets Russes of Paris 1909, What Disappears follows the poignant story of identical twins separated at nine months in a world that is changing rapidly. One sister clings to her difficult life as a dancer; the other who has lost both her great loves, struggles on with her three daughters. Between breathtaking scenes of betrayal, danger and perfect love found and lost, little is as we expect it as the twins reunite in Paris. One sister is the quiet steadfast heart of this story and the other its restless discontent. Some dreams shatter, and other come true in a way you never could have expected. What Disappears is a book you will find hard to put down and impossible to forget.”

–Stephanie Cowell, author of Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet and Marrying Mozart, American Book Award recipient

“What Disappears is a tour de force. With a dancer’s grace, agility and subtlety, Barbara Quick creates indelible scenes that unfold as her characters, both famous and fictional, discover the fragility of their deepest core values. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to keep up with my own racing mind! How do we use the artistic self to cover or costume or hide? In this author’s hands, twin-hood becomes a metaphor for the conflict between a stage persona and an offstage one. I shivered with recognition at her portrayal of the male ego, presumption, oblivion and rational thought being clouded by carnal or artistic desires. Any dancer or athlete will resonate with these characters’ use of physical work to staunch or avoid the excruciating reality of emotional pain. The historic figures in the book— Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Pavlova, Karsavina, and titans of the fashion world— become ever more real through the way Quick illustrates the turmoil and self-doubt of the artistic mind, regardless of the artist’s fame. Quick reveals symbolism threaded through these characters’ lives that sheds light on our own in the way only great literature can do. Are we all performing our way through life, “running from whatever demons we carry around inside us… straight into the arms of death”? By the end of this masterful work, we can indeed understand that when our inner and outer selves reconcile, what disappears is in fact what remains.”

–Gavin Larsen, author of Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life

“Barbara Quick is at the height of her powers in her newest novel, an epic narrative of the ballet world, European history and high fashion. Her characters are so real—so vital—they seem to say, “Come toward us and see what’s inside!” And we do, following them with fascination one by one. The plot crosses back and forth across continents and time to braid an intergenerational story with unflagging momentum and gripping emotional appeal. Like her 2007 novel Vivaldi’s Virgins, What Disappears sings with musical complexity and vivid sensuality.”

–Grace Cavalieri, Maryland Poet Laureate

“In this well-researched and exquisite novel of artistic innovation during the first decades of the twentieth century, Barbara Quick deftly evokes a world rushing headlong into modernity. Through the eyes of two sensitive and artistic Russian sisters we experience the devastating pogroms of Russia and the dazzling Paris of the Ballets Russes, high fashion, and literature, meeting luminaries such as Ninjinski,  Diaghilev, Paul Poiret, Colette, and others along the way. This vibrant novel of loss, ambition, and destiny will resonate long after you finish reading it.”

–Mitchell Kaplan, award-winning author of Into the Unbounded Night and Rhapsody

The wonderful Garrison Keillor recorded five of my poems in 2021 (pinch me!) and featured them on The Writer’s Almanac. Here are the latest three, both from my as-yet-unpublished full-length poetry collection, The Feeling of Earth on My Fingers.

On July 26, Mr. Keillor read my poem “Falling” on his program. I wrote the poem a very long time ago… Click the arrow to hear it!

Here’s Mr. Keillor reading “This Is How It Will Be”:

“The Struggle That Undergirds the Grace,” a sonnet, was aired on The Writer’s Almanac on June 28th in a performance that pierced my heart (and I wrote the poem!). Have a listen:

Garrison Keillor recorded “Skinny-Dipping in Vathy,” one of the poems from my just-published chapbook, The Light on Sifnos.

On April 15th, Garrison Keillor recorded my poem, “Conjuring Nana”! Do I feel proud? You betcha.

Vivaldi’s Virgins is in development as a mini-series!

Michele Berk of Lotus Productions optioned Vivaldi’s Virgins last year for a mini-series. The brilliant Agnieszka Holland has been attached to the project as director. Agatha Dominik will write the script. I get the “Created By” credit—and will serve as Story Consultant. This is something I’ve long wished for! What a magnificent chance this will be for me to return to Venice—and to give back to Venice, after all that Venice has given me. Stay tuned for updates!

Two poems of mine just published in the Winter Solstice issue of Gail Entrekin’s beautiful eco-poetry magazine, Canary

A poem of mine published in the debut issue of Emily Ferrara’s Pendemics Journal: The Masked Issue

Have a listen to the interview and reading I had the honor of doing for the long-running Library of Congress program, “The Poet & the Poem,” with host Grace Cavalieri.

The chapbook of poems I wrote last summer on the Greek Island of Sifnos was co-winner of the 2020 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize. Many thanks to publisher Diane Frank, who will be bringing out “The Light on Sifnos” next year. I hope to be able to return to Greece for my book tour! I especially have my eye on Atlantis Books on Santorini—and of course I want to return to Sifnos to see and thank the many friends I made there. It was such a pleasure, in 2019, to be able to give away a copy of Vivaldi’s Virgins in Greek. In this time of lockdown, my travel memories are particularly sweet.

On September 10, 2020, I was interviewed by Stephanie Cowell (Marrying Mozart) along with author Patricia Morrisroe (Woman in the Moonlight) for a program hosted by Susan Wands and the New York City Chapter of the Historical Novel Society. A great time was had by all! You can stream the program here:

I was one of four authors interviewed for this podcast created by Jaynie Royal, the extraordinary publisher and editor-in-chief at Regal House, which will be publishing my new novel, What Disappears, early in 2022.

From Regal House Publishing

Struggling to write under lockdown? Listen in to see how these remarkable women authors (Cheryl Ossola, Kate Murdoch, Barbara Quick, Maureen Pilkington) from all over the world are managing isolation, building community, and finding hope amid a pandemic.

https://regalhouse.buzzsprout.com/966220/3729176-writing-under-lockdown