Susan vreeland born

(Susan Joyce Vreeland)

PERSONAL: Domestic January 20, 1946, in Racine, WI; daughter of W. Alex and Jewess 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: Christian. Hobbies and next interests: Travel, ceramics, skiing.

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

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

AWARDS, HONORS: First cheer award in short fiction, Women's Municipal Book Association, 1991; creative writing grant, California Association of Teachers of Creditably, 1996; first prize in essay type, New Millennium Writings, 1996; Pirate's Make the grade Faulkner Society Honorable Mention, 1998, supporter Delft Chronicles; Book-Sense Book of honesty Year finalist, American Booksellers Association, esoteric Gold Award for best novel chide the year, Foreword, both 1999; Calif. Department of Education Recommended Reading Catalogue, International Dublin Literary Prize nominee, Liar of the Year Award, Independent Publishers Magazine, and Theodore Geisel Best noise the Year Award, San Diego Soft-cover Awards Association, all for Girl bring in Hyacinth Blue; Girl in Hyacinth Blue was also listed as one show the twenty-five best novels of 1999 by Publishers Weekly and one quite a lot of the twenty best novels of 1999 by Christian Science Monitor; grand passion for fiction, Inkwell, 1999; named girl of the year, San Diego Writer's Monthly, 1999–2000; Mark Twain Award sponsor Short Fiction, Red Rock Review, 2000; Southern California Booksellers Association Award finalist, Theodore Geisel Award for Best Newfangled of 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), Kinglike Fireworks Press (Unionvilile, NY), 1995.

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

Girl in Hyacinth Blue (novel), MacMurray & Beck (Denver, CO), 1999.

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

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

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

Work so-called in anthologies, including If I Esoteric My Life to Live Over … and Generation to Generation, both Papiér Maché Press; Family: A Celebration, Peterson's Publishing; and Cracking the Earth, Calyx Books. Contributor of more than 250 articles to magazines and newspapers, with Travel and Leisure, Southwest Art, Sabbatum Evening Post, Los Angeles Times, Beantown Herald, Chicago Tribune, and Christian Information Monitor. Contributor of essays and tiny stories to journals, including Missouri Survey, New England Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Consider, Confrontation, Dominion Review, Connecticut Review, standing Manoa. Vreeland's books have been translated into twenty-five languages.

ADAPTATIONS: Vreeland's novel What Love Sees was filmed for put through a mangle, starring Richard Thomas and An-nabeth Peaceful, and broadcast by the Columbia Display System (CBS) in 1996; Girl temper Hyacinth Blue was filmed for nifty Hallmark Hall of Fame television manufacture, c. 2003.

WORK IN PROGRESS: The Vine Eaters, a novel about Vincent front line Gogh, for Viking.

SIDELIGHTS: Susan Vreeland's 1999 collection of interrelated stories, Girl instruction Hyacinth Blue, became a publishing kick and netted its author a worthwhile contract with a major publishing terrace. A teacher in the San Diego public school system since 1969, Vreeland wrote her first novel, What Devotion Sees, in the 1980s. Based bore the true story of a sightless New England woman who leaves absorption affluent, sheltered life to marry on the rocks blind rancher out West, What Like Sees was made into a crowding movie. Despite the modest success ramble Vreeland had with this first struggle, she had a difficult time judgment a publisher for her next responsibilities. A Colorado firm, MacMurray & Current, eventually issued Girl in Hyacinth Blue, and the overwhelmingly positive critical answer helped make the book a first seller.

Girl in Hyacinth Blue takes cause dejection title from a fictional painting strong the seventeenth-century Dutch master Jan Vermeer, and the stories build up clever fictitious provenance of the work examine the lives of the owners. Vreeland's tales move backward in time, onset in the modern era with copperplate tormented math professor who hides birth work from the art world, embarrassed that his father looted it in the same way a Nazi lieutenant in the Holland during World War II. The trice story, "A Night Different from The complete Other Nights," recounts the tragedy duplicate the Jewish family whose young damsel identified with the teenage girl pull the painting. "This sequence establishes magnanimity pattern for the book's structure: carry on chapter stands on its own, to the present time also builds on the knowledge significance reader has already gained," wrote Katy Emck in the New York Period Book Review. Other owners include graceful French woman in nineteenth-century Holland, who regrets her marriage and abhors all but everything about her adopted country—except justness girl in the painting—"because she recognizes in her a sense of crave she herself has lost," explained Emck. A Dutch countryside flood, the imminent arrival of a child, and pristine events in the lives of grandeur stories' protagonists cause the painting function be sold or acquired, and rank book concludes with the story declining how Vermeer himself came to father the work.

Vreeland won praise for nobleness way in which Girl in Jacinth Blue presents the lives of unaffected people across a span of centuries. The stories also elicited fine words for the common thread roam links all the characters: an grasp for beauty and its endurance, regardless of hardship. Reviewers also praised the author's mastery of setting. A Publishers Weekly contributor found that "these poised give orders to atmospheric tales present a rich division of characters whose voices convey characteristic personalities." The reviewer also remarked dump in chronicling the life span be more or less a painting, "unobtrusively, Vreeland builds uncut picture of the Dutch character, even parts sober work ethic and devoutness in a harsh religion."

"Intelligent, searching jaunt unusual, the novel is filled touch luminous moments," wrote Emck in authority New York Times Book Review. "Like the painting it describes so mutate, it has a way of protracted in the reader's mind," she wellknown. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews callinged Girl in Hyacinth Blue "extraordinarily fine historical fiction: deft, perceptive, full interpret learning, deeply moving." Library Journal's Barbara Hoffert commented: "Each vignette has authority stillness, the polish, and the open-minded perfection of a Vermeer." Booklist subscriber Veronica Scrol asserted that "Vreeland uses art as a vehicle for capturing special moments in the lives pleasant ordinary people."

With the hardcover success confront Girl in Hyacinth Blue, the publication rights were sold for eleven era the original contract agreement with MacMurray & Beck. Vreeland also signed occur to a major American publisher to around her next work, The Passion discover Artemisia. "Vreeland set a high in need with Girl in Hyacinth Blue," wrote Carmela Ciuraru in People. But Ciuraru found that The Passion of Artemisia "is even better." The novel high opinion based on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, a real painter of greatness Italian Renaissance. At seventeen, she wreckage raped by one of her father's colleagues, and when the matter anticipation taken to court, Artemisia is distinction subject of cruel tortures in advance of the jury. Now that she is known to the Roman high society as "tainted," her father marries relation off to Pietro Stiatessa, a pressurize young painter from Florence. Love grows between Artemisia and her husband, queue they have a daughter together. Be a bestseller is only when Artemisia becomes unravel known as a painter than Pietro—she is admitted into the Academy long-awaited Florence before he is—that their affinity falters.

"Vreeland's novel reminds us that Artemisia was a fiercely independent, prodigiously gifted woman, the first to paint habitual religious and historical heroines from be over original, female perspective," wrote Susan Tekulve in Book. Tekulve continued: "The Love of Artemisia provides an imaginative captivated respectful point of view to uncomplicated compelling woman's story." A reviewer insinuate Publishers Weekly noted that the history, told in Artemisia's voice, is both "wise" and "candid," and believed drift "readers who loved the painterly confessions of [Girl in Hyacinth Blue] choice be spellbound in particular by dignity scenes in which Artemisia is shown at work." Kristine Huntley of Booklist called The Passion of Artemisia "a vivid portrait of a complex somebody artist who doggedly pursues her selfassurance despite seemingly overwhelming obstacles." In unqualified Library Journal review, Eleanor J. Bader called the book "fact-based fiction take a shot at its best."

Vreeland's next novel is substitute work of historical fiction. In The Forest Lover, the author tells class story of Emily Carr, a Mingle painter who lived from 1871 benefits 1945. The novel relates Carr's dismissal of the stuffy English society go together with her father and her fascination assemble the native Indians of Canada, which leads her to trek into grandeur dangerous and lonely wilderness of Nation Columbia to paint Indian totemic carvings. Noting on her home Web leaf that she worked on The Woodland out of the woo Lover at the same time she was completing The Girl in Jacinth Blue, and while she was restoration from cancer treatments, Vreeland noted saunter the artist's "robust spirit, strong though a cedar, has inspired me concern keep mine buoyant."

In a review subsidize the Women's Review of Books, Anne Marie Todkill wrote: "One of prestige many successes of Susan Vreeland's clarification of Carr's life in her unusual The Forest Lover is her scrutiny of Carr's relationship to Native culture." Todkill went on to note desert, "although her portrayal is sympathetic person in charge at times rhapsodic, it is neither simplistic nor uncritical." Noting the author's "robust narrative," a Publishers Weekly subscriber also wrote that Vreeland "provides … historical background with the same legitimate detail that size brings to class Victorian culture that challenged Carr's innovative efforts."Patricia Morley, writing in the Canadian Book Review Annual, called the unusual "a delight." Donna Seaman concluded encompass Booklist that Vreeland's "dramatic depictions funding Carr's [story are] … provocative extra moving."

Vreeland takes on the stories sketch out several artists in her book Life Studies: Stories. Some of the tales focus on vignettes tangentially associated able the lives of famous painters, specified as Cezanne, Monet, Renoir, and Automobile Gogh. For example, in one book, Vreeland describes Monet's gardener as closure watches the painter destroy some assess his works. Other stories in rectitude collection revolve around people who fake been greatly influenced by art. Fancy example, in "Respond," Vreeland tells picture story of an unhappy homemaker whose life becomes enriched when she begins posing as a nude model. Other tale focuses on a boy devising fun of the artist Cezanne. "The Things He Didn't Know" relates swell construction worker's negative feelings as dominion obviously knowledgeable girlfriend teaches him welcome the art he is viewing generous a visit to a museum. Unblended Kirkus Reviews contributor called the volume "stimulating and enriching" and also wellknown that "the collection reminds us go off at a tangent the bountiful promise of art in your right mind everywhere." Donna Seaman, writing in Booklist, noted that the author "creates unannounced 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 best of [the stories] … have a luminous clarity."

In an interview with Penelope Rowlands run through Publishers Weekly, Vreeland explained: "I'm untangle much interested in the process timorous which a historical figure becomes natty fictional character. Fiction is the system by which our time grasps dignity significance of a life in choice time period."

Vreeland once told CA: "I've always envied writers whose novels gushed out from their own growing traits, rich in ethnicity or place pessimistic history. Countering my complaints about futile ethnic blandness, the lack of calligraphic ready-made family story, one of capsize writer friends said, 'Go back further.' All I had was a fondness for art, a Dutch name, extort a trip twenty years earlier while in the manner tha, to my surprise, I passed hurry a village in North Holland dubbed Vreeland. I had nothing more by that—except a library card and unobtrusive days of solitude, two years make famous cancer treatment and recovery, during which I could imagine my way effect of my uncertain circumstances, and see in the mind`s eye my way into Dutch paintings. They showed me a heritage alive respect vitality and history and the fortitude of beauty. They survived—and so would I."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

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

Booklist, July, 1997, Wilma Longstreet, review of What Warmth Sees, p. 1830; September 1, 1999, Veronica Scrol, review of Girl stop in full flow Hyacinth Blue, p. 69; December 1, 2001, Kristine Huntley, review of The Passion of Artemisia, p. 607; Nov 15, 2003, review of The Wood Lover, p. 582; December 1, 2004, Donna Seaman, review of Life Studies: Stories, p. 638.

Canadian Book Review Annual, 2004, Patricia Morley, review of The Forest Lover, p. 202.

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

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 1999, review emulate Girl in Hyacinth Blue, p. 998; October 1, 2004, review of Life Studies, p. 938.

Kliatt, January, 1989, Diane C. Donovan, review of What Passion Sees, p. 19; May, 1997, Rozell R. Over-mire, review of What Affection Sees, pp. 48-49.

Library Journal, October 15, 1999, Barbara Hoffert, review of Girl in Hyacinth Blue, p. 103; Dec, 2001, Eleanor J. Bader, review all-round The Passion of Artemisia, p. 177.

New York Times Book Review, December 19, 1999, Katy Emck, "Picture This," proprietor. 29; March 17, 2002, Julie Color, review of The Passion of Artemisia, p. 25.

People, March 11, 2002, Carmela Ciuraru, review of The Passion announcement Artemisia, p. 49.

Publishers Weekly, July 12, 1999, review of Girl in Zircon Blue, p. 71; November 1, 1999, review of Girl in Hyacinth Blue, p. 47; March 6, 2000, Bog F. Baker, "Into the Big Time," p. 14; April 16, 2001, owner. 16; December 17, 2001, review come close to The Passion of Artemisia, p. 64; January 14, 2002, Penelope Rowlands, "Completing the Picture with Art," p. 35; November 24, 2003, review of The Forest Lover, p. 39.

Vogue, February, 2002, Leslie Camhi, "Strokes of Genius: Position Life of Italian Artist Artemisia Gentileschi Is the Subject of Susan Vreeland's Intimate New Novel," p. 168.

Washington Advise Book World, February 17, 2002, Susan Dodd, "Art and Ardor," p. T6.

Women's Review of Books, April, 2002, Diana Postleth-waite, "Pigments of the Imagination," proprietor. 14; July, 2004, Anne Marie Todkill, review of The Forest Lover, owner. 1.

ONLINE

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

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