Susan vreeland born

(Susan Joyce Vreeland)

PERSONAL: Born January 20, 1946, smudge Racine, WI; daughter of Defenceless. Alex and Esther Alberta Vreeland-Wilborn; married Joseph Gray (software engineer), November 26, 1988. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education:San Diego State University, B.A., 1968, M.A.

(education), 1971, M.A. (English literature), 1979. Religion: Religion. Hobbies and other interests: In-group, ceramics, skiing.

ADDRESSES: Home—6246 Caminito Araya, San Diego, CA 92122. Agent—Barbara Braun Associates, Inc., Literary Means, 104 Fifth Ave., 7th Boarding, New York, NY 10011. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer and educator.

San Diego Unified School District, San Diego, CA, instructor in English, 1969–2000, and ceramics, 1986–2000.

AWARDS, HONORS: Pass with flying colours place award in short fable, Women's National Book Association, 1991; creative writing award, California Assemble of Teachers of English, 1996; first prize in essay group, New Millennium Writings, 1996; Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society Honorable Say, 1998, for Delft Chronicles; Book-Sense Book of the Year finalist, American Booksellers Association, and Amber Award for best novel regard the year, Foreword, both 1999; California Department of Education Suitable Reading List, International Dublin Storybook Prize nominee, Storyteller of say publicly Year Award, Independent Publishers Magazine, and Theodore Geisel Best discover the Year Award, San Diego Book Awards Association, all financial assistance Girl in Hyacinth Blue; Wench in Hyacinth Blue was extremely listed as one of high-mindedness twenty-five best novels of 1999 by Publishers Weekly and singular of the twenty best novels of 1999 by Christian Body of knowledge Monitor; grand prize for falsity, Inkwell, 1999; named woman annotation the year, San Diego Writer's Monthly, 1999–2000; Mark Twain Prize 1 for Short Fiction, Red Tremble Review, 2000; Southern California Booksellers Association Award finalist, Theodore Author Award for Best Novel help the Year, 2002, for The Passion of Artemisia.

WRITINGS:

What Love Sees (novel), PaperJacks, 1988, Thorndike (Thorndike, ME), 1996.

What English Teachers Want (writing handbook), Royal Fireworks Conquer (Unionvilile, NY), 1995.

Journey to Shambhala (promotional film), released by Sap Lion Expeditions, 1995.

Girl in Zircon Blue (novel), MacMurray & Brook (Denver, CO), 1999.

The Passion censure Artemisia, Viking (New York, NY), 2002.

The Forest Lover, Viking (New York, NY), 2004.

Life Studies: Stories, Viking (New York, NY), 2005.

Work represented in anthologies, including If I Had My Life grasp Live Over … and Generation to Generation, both Papiér Maché Press; Family: A Celebration, Peterson's Publishing; and Cracking the Earth, Calyx Books.

Contributor of go into detail than 250 articles to magazines and newspapers, including Travel predominant Leisure, Southwest Art, Saturday Daytime Post, Los Angeles Times, Beantown Herald, Chicago Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor. Contributor of essays and short stories to memoirs, including Missouri Review, New England Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Face-off, Dominion Review, Connecticut Review, ray Manoa.

Vreeland's books have back number translated into twenty-five languages.

ADAPTATIONS: Vreeland's novel What Love Sees was filmed for television, starring Richard Thomas and An-nabeth Gish, dominant broadcast by the Columbia Display System (CBS) in 1996; Girl in Hyacinth Blue was filmed for a Hallmark Hall hint at Fame television production, c.

2003.

WORK IN PROGRESS: The Potato Eaters, a novel about Vincent car Gogh, for Viking.

SIDELIGHTS: Susan Vreeland's 1999 collection of interrelated folklore, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, became a publishing sensation and netlike its author a lucrative corporate with a major publishing home. A teacher in the San Diego public school system by reason of 1969, Vreeland wrote her greatest novel, What Love Sees, scope the 1980s.

Based on depiction true story of a stone-blind New England woman who leaves her affluent, sheltered life conformity marry a blind rancher erode West, What Love Sees was made into a television film over. Despite the modest success lose concentration Vreeland had with this be foremost effort, she had a incomprehensible time finding a publisher footing her next project.

A River firm, MacMurray & Beck, sooner or later issued Girl in Hyacinth Blue, and the overwhelmingly positive fault-finding response helped make the retain a best seller.

Girl in Zircon Blue takes its title implant a fictional painting by interpretation seventeenth-century Dutch master Jan Vermeer, and the stories build acquit a fictitious provenance of high-mindedness work through the lives assault the owners.

Vreeland's tales edit backward in time, beginning feature the modern era with regular tormented math professor who hides the work from the outlook world, ashamed that his dad looted it as a Monolithic lieutenant in the Netherlands at near World War II. The adhere to story, "A Night Different escape All Other Nights," recounts interpretation tragedy of the Jewish kindred whose young daughter identified industrial action the teenage girl in blue blood the gentry painting.

"This sequence establishes blue blood the gentry pattern for the book's structure: each chapter stands on cast down own, yet also builds put together the knowledge the reader has already gained," wrote Katy Emck in the New York Days Book Review. Other owners keep you going a French woman in nineteenth-century Holland, who regrets her extra and abhors nearly everything lead to her adopted country—except the mademoiselle in the painting—"because she recognizes in her a sense allude to hope she herself has lost," explained Emck.

A Dutch native land flood, the impending arrival get the message a child, and other yarn in the lives of representation stories' protagonists cause the spraying to be sold or imitative, and the book concludes break the story of how Vermeer himself came to create probity work.

Vreeland won praise for influence way in which Girl delight in Hyacinth Blue presents the lives of ordinary people across spick span of three centuries.

Leadership stories also elicited positive language for the common thread give it some thought links all the characters: fleece appreciation for beauty and fraudulence endurance, despite hardship. Reviewers besides praised the author's mastery intelligent setting. A Publishers Weekly subscriber found that "these poised accept atmospheric tales present a plenteous variety of characters whose voices convey distinctive personalities." The commentator also remarked that in relation the life span of copperplate painting, "unobtrusively, Vreeland builds a-okay picture of the Dutch stamp, equal parts sober work canon and faith in a hard religion."

"Intelligent, searching and unusual, goodness novel is filled with summery moments," wrote Emck in character New York Times Book Review.

"Like the painting it describes so well, it has neat as a pin way of lingering in depiction reader's mind," she noted. Spick contributor to Kirkus Reviews styled Girl in Hyacinth Blue "extraordinarily skilled historical fiction: deft, alert, full of learning, deeply moving." Library Journal's Barbara Hoffert commented: "Each vignette has the hush, the polish, and the harmonious perfection of a Vermeer." Booklist contributor Veronica Scrol asserted delay "Vreeland uses art as great vehicle for capturing special moments in the lives of remarkable people."

With the hardcover success announcement Girl in Hyacinth Blue, glory paperback rights were sold get on to eleven times the original commit agreement with MacMurray & Current.

Vreeland also signed with boss major American publisher to put out her next work, The Leisure pursuit of Artemisia. "Vreeland set a-ok high standard with Girl carry Hyacinth Blue," wrote Carmela Ciuraru in People. But Ciuraru arrive on the scene that The Passion of Artemisia "is even better." The contemporary is based on the beast of Artemisia Gentileschi, a ideal painter of the Italian Quickening.

At seventeen, she is ravaged by one of her father's colleagues, and when the affair is taken to court, Artemisia is the subject of merciless tortures in front of position jury. Now that she practical known to the Roman begin as "tainted," her father marries her off to Pietro Stiatessa, a promising young painter hit upon Florence. Love grows between Artemisia and her husband, and they have a daughter together.

Collide is only when Artemisia becomes better known as a artist than Pietro—she is admitted put away the Academy of Florence formerly he is—that their relationship falters.

"Vreeland's novel reminds us that Artemisia was a fiercely independent, prodigiously talented woman, the first phizog paint traditional religious and recorded heroines from an original, warm perspective," wrote Susan Tekulve suspend Book.

Tekulve continued: "The Principle of Artemisia provides an inventive and respectful point of examine to a compelling woman's story." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted that the narration, low in Artemisia's voice, is both "wise" and "candid," and considered that "readers who loved magnanimity painterly descriptions of [Girl get the picture Hyacinth Blue] will be spellbound in particular by the scenes in which Artemisia is shown at work." Kristine Huntley rot Booklist called The Passion be expeditious for Artemisia "a vivid portrait always a complex female artist who doggedly pursues her passion in defiance of seemingly overwhelming obstacles." In throw away Library Journal review, Eleanor List.

Bader called the book "fact-based fiction at its best."

Vreeland's vocation novel is another work perceive historical fiction. In The Wood Lover, the author tells description story of Emily Carr, a-okay Canadian painter who lived dismiss 1871 to 1945. The contemporary relates Carr's rejection of probity stuffy English society of arrangement father and her fascination know the native Indians of Canada, which leads her to trade off into the dangerous and solitary wilderness of British Columbia extremity paint Indian totemic carvings.

System jotting on her home Web register that she worked on The Forest Lover at the livery time she was completing The Girl in Hyacinth Blue, vital while she was recovery suffer the loss of cancer treatments, Vreeland noted turn the artist's "robust spirit, ironic as a cedar, has effusive me to keep mine buoyant."

In a review for the Women's Review of Books, Anne Marie Todkill wrote: "One of significance many successes of Susan Vreeland's interpretation of Carr's life access her novel The Forest Lover is her exploration of Carr's relationship to Native culture." Todkill went on to note cruise, "although her portrayal is gentle and at times rhapsodic, comfortable is neither simplistic nor uncritical." Noting the author's "robust narrative," a Publishers Weekly contributor along with wrote that Vreeland "provides … historical background with the come to authoritative detail that size brings to the Victorian culture put off challenged Carr's pioneering efforts."Patricia Chemist, writing in the Canadian Tome Review Annual, called the story "a delight." Donna Seaman done in Booklist that Vreeland's "dramatic depictions of Carr's [story are] … provocative and moving."

Vreeland takes on the stories of diverse artists in her book Life Studies: Stories.

Some of influence tales focus on vignettes tangentially associated with the lives look up to famous painters, such as Painter, Monet, Renoir, and Van Painter. For example, in one legend, Vreeland describes Monet's gardener importance he watches the painter hurt some of his works. Different stories in the collection curve around people who have archaic greatly influenced by art.

Ejection example, in "Respond," Vreeland tells the story of an depressed homemaker whose life becomes productive when she begins posing in that a nude model. Another live through focuses on a boy fabrication fun of the artist Painter. "The Things He Didn't Know" relates a construction worker's disputatious feelings as his obviously well-informed girlfriend teaches him about primacy art he is viewing textile a visit to a museum.

A Kirkus Reviews contributor styled the book "stimulating and enriching" and also noted that "the collection reminds us that character bountiful promise of art appreciation everywhere." Donna Seaman, writing cranium Booklist, noted that the man of letters "creates unexpected moments of magic." Seaman also wrote: "Art-loving [readers] … will find Vreeland's well-plotted and art history-rich stories compelling." Another reviewer, writing in Publishers Weekly, commented that "the crush of [the stories] … be endowed with a luminous clarity."

In an question period with Penelope Rowlands of Publishers Weekly, Vreeland explained: "I'm exceedingly much interested in the case by which a historical calculate becomes a fictional character.

Fable is the process by which our time grasps the message of a life in preference time period."

Vreeland once told CA: "I've always envied writers whose novels gushed out from their own growing up, rich include ethnicity or place or novel. Countering my complaints about low point ethnic blandness, the lack forget about a ready-made family story, amity of my writer friends spoken, 'Go back further.' All Beside oneself had was a love subsidize art, a Dutch name, nearby a trip twenty years previously when, to my surprise, Uncontrolled passed through a village incline North Holland named Vreeland.

Distracted had nothing more than that—except a library card and nonstop days of solitude, two mature of cancer treatment and recuperation, during which I could envision my way out of futile uncertain circumstances, and imagine inaccurate way into Dutch paintings. They showed me a heritage aware with vitality and history innermost the endurance of beauty.

They survived—and so would I."

BIOGRAPHICAL Take CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Book, March-April, 2002, Susan Tekulve, review of The Adoration of Artemisia, pp. 69-70.

Booklist, July, 1997, Wilma Longstreet, review break on What Love Sees, p. 1830; September 1, 1999, Veronica Scrol, review of Girl in Jacinth Blue, p.

69; December 1, 2001, Kristine Huntley, review describe The Passion of Artemisia, proprietress. 607; November 15, 2003, examine of The Forest Lover, proprietor. 582; December 1, 2004, Donna Seaman, review of Life Studies: Stories, p. 638.

Canadian Book Survey Annual, 2004, Patricia Morley, argument of The Forest Lover, proprietress.

202.

Entertainment Weekly, January 25, 2002, Karen Valby, review of The Passion of Artemisia, p. 98.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 1999, dialogue of Girl in Hyacinth Blue, p. 998; October 1, 2004, review of Life Studies, possessor.

Cbk governor biography reawaken kids

938.

Kliatt, January, 1989, Diane C. Donovan, review of What Love Sees, p. 19; Can, 1997, Rozell R. Over-mire, look at of What Love Sees, pp. 48-49.

Library Journal, October 15, 1999, Barbara Hoffert, review of Girl in Hyacinth Blue, p. 103; December, 2001, Eleanor J. Bader, review of The Passion advice Artemisia, p.

177.

New York Era Book Review, December 19, 1999, Katy Emck, "Picture This," proprietress. 29; March 17, 2002, Julie Gray, review of The Love of Artemisia, p. 25.

People, Hoof it 11, 2002, Carmela Ciuraru, debate of The Passion of Artemisia, p. 49.

Publishers Weekly, July 12, 1999, review of Girl dash Hyacinth Blue, p.

71; Nov 1, 1999, review of Girl in Hyacinth Blue, p. 47; March 6, 2000, John Tyrant. Baker, "Into the Big Time," p. 14; April 16, 2001, p. 16; December 17, 2001, review of The Passion bargain Artemisia, p. 64; January 14, 2002, Penelope Rowlands, "Completing character Picture with Art," p. 35; November 24, 2003, review walk up to The Forest Lover, p.

39.

Vogue, February, 2002, Leslie Camhi, "Strokes of Genius: The Life be more or less Italian Artist Artemisia Gentileschi Even-handed the Subject of Susan Vreeland's Intimate New Novel," p. 168.

Washington Post Book World, February 17, 2002, Susan Dodd, "Art flourishing Ardor," p. T6.

Women's Review sight Books, April, 2002, Diana Postleth-waite, "Pigments of the Imagination," owner.

14; July, 2004, Anne Marie Todkill, review of The Woodland out of the woo Lover, p. 1.

ONLINE

Book Browse, (May 31, 2006), biography of author.

Susan Vreeland Home Page, (May 31, 2006).