‘Daily Rituals: Women at Work’ by Mason Currey

‘Daily Rituals: Women at Work’ by Mason Currey

WHO: Mason Currey

WHAT: DAILY RITUALS: Women at Work

WHEN: Published by Knopf March 5, 2019

WHERE: The author lives in Los Angeles.

WHY: 143 artists on how they paint, write, perform, direct, choreograph, design, sculpt, compose, dance, etc.

. . . . .

FROM THE AUTHOR:

This is a sequel, and a corrective. In 2013, I published Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, a collection of brief profiles of the day-to-day working lives of novelists, poets, painters, composers, philosophers, and other inspired minds. I’m proud of that book, and delighted that it has found an audience of fellow creative-process voyeurs interested to know that Beethoven counted out precisely sixty coffee beans for his morning cup, or that George Balanchine did his best work while ironing, or that Maya Angelou wrote in a “tiny, mean” hotel room, surrounded by a dictionary, a Bible, a deck of cards, and a bottle of sherry. But the book had, I now admit, a major flaw: Of the 161 figures I included, only 27 were women. Less than 17 percent.

So this volume is a belated effort to correct that gender imbalance, but also to better fulfill my ambition for the original book. With it, I had hoped to achieve something more than just a collection of highbrow trivia; I wanted the book to be genuinely useful to readers who were trying to do their own creative projects and struggling to make the time or get into the right state of mind on a regular basis. That has often been my situation as a writer, and as a result I have always been hungry for stories of how others pulled it off, at the most basic level. Did they write or paint or compose every day, and if so, for how long, and starting at what time? Did that include weekends, too? How did they do that and also earn a living, and get enough sleep, and attend to the other people in their lives? And even if they could manage the logistical side of things — the when and where and for how long — how did they cope with more slippery crises of self-confidence and self-discipline?

Here are 143 attempts at an answer.

. . . . .

FEATURED IN THE BOOK:

Akins, Zoe * Albers, Anni * Albers, Patricia * Alcott, Louisa May * Allende, Isabel * Anderson, Marian * Angelou, Maya * Antin, Eleanor * Arbus, Diane * Asawa, Ruth * Athill, Diana * Baker, Josephine * Bambara, Toni Cade * Bankhead, Tallulah * Barnes, Djuna * Barney, Natalie Clifford * Barrett Browning, Elizabeth * Bashkirtseff, Marie * Batten, Mabel “Ladye” * Bausch, Pina * Beach, Sylvia * Bell, Vanessa * Bernhardt, Sarah * Bishop, Elizabeth * Bishop, Isabel * Bloch, Lucienne * Boissevain, Eugen * Bonheur, Rosa * Bonjour Tristesse * Bourke-White, Margaret * Bowen, Elizabeth * Bowen, Stella * Bradstreet, Anne * Bray, Charlotte * Brontë, Anne * Brontë, Charlotte * Brontë, Emily * Brooks, Gwendolyn * Brooks, Romaine * Browning, Pen * Butler, Octavia * Campbell, Mrs. Patrick * Campion, Jane * Carr, Cornelia * Carter, Elizabeth * Chanel, Coco * Chopin, Kate * Claridge, Laura * Coleman, Emily * Colette * Comden, Betty * Cordelier de la Noue, Amélie, * Cox, Renee * Coyne, Petah * Curie, Irene * Curie, Marie * Damia, Marisa * Dany, Louise * Deffand, Marie de Vichy-Chamrond * de Mille, Agnes * Dickinson, Emily * Didion, Joan * Dietrich, Marlene * Dillard, Annie * Dinesen, Isak * Duncan, Isadora * Duras, Marguerite * Easton, Carol * Eliot, George * Farrell, Eileen * Ferber, Edna * Ferrante, Elena * Fitzgerald, Maria * Fitzgerald, Penelope * Flanner, Janet * Fontanne, Lynn * Frame, Janet * Frankenthaler, Helen * Franklin, Ruth * Fuller, Margaret * Garelick, Rhonda K. * Gaskell, Elizabeth * Geoffrin, Marie * Ginzburg, Leone * Ginzburg, Liza * Ginzburg, Natalia * Giovanni, Nikki * Givner, Joan * Goodman, Dena * Gordon, Charlotte * Graham, Martha * Gray, Eileen * Guggenheim, Peggy * Hambling, Maggi * Hansberry, Lorraine * Hartigan, Grace * Head, Edith * Hellman, Lillian * Hepburn, Katharine * Hepworth, Barbara * Heti, Sheila * Hosmer, Harriet * Howe, Julia Ward * Howe, Maud * Hurst, Fannie * Hurston, Zora Neale * Jackson, Shirley * Jacobs, Harriet * July, Miranda * Kahlo, Frida * Katzen, Lila * Kearns, Martha * King, Carole * Klein, Carole * Kligman, Ruth * Klumpke, Anna * Kollwitz, Käthe * Krasner, Lee * Kusama, Yayoi * Lawrence, Gertrude * Lee, Hermione * Leen, Nina * Lempicka, Kizette * Lempicka, Tadeusz * Lempicka, Tamara de * Lespinasse, Julie de, * Lessing, Doris * Lupino, Ida * Mansfield, Katherine * Mantel, Hilary * Markus, Julia * Marouzé, Marie-Hélène * Martin, Agnes * Martineau, Harriet * Meade, Marion * Meckseper, Josephine * Mehretu, Julie * Micas, Natalie * Millay, Edna St. Vincent * Minter, Marilyn * Mitchell, Joan * Mitchell, Margaret * Monk, Meredith * Montagu, Elizabeth * Moore, Marianne * Naylor, Gloria * Necker, Suzanne * Neel, Alice * Nelson, Maggie * Nemser, Cindy * Nevelson, Louise * Nilsson, Birgit * Norman, Jessye * Nunez, Sigrid * Opie, Catherine * Paley, Grace * Parker, Dorothy * Pavlova, Anna * Peters, Margot * Porter, Katherine Anne * Post, Amy * Post, Emily * Price, Leontyne * Reich, Nancy B. * Riley, Bridget * Roosevelt, Anna * Roosevelt, Eleanor * Rossetti, Christina * Saint Phalle, Niki de * Sand, George * Sarton, May * Schiaparelli, Elsa * Schneemann, Carolee * Schumaker, Lulu * Schumann, Clara * Scudder, Janet * Shange, Ntozake * Shelley, Mary * Sherman, Cindy * Sills, Beverly * Simone, Nina * Smith, Patti * Smith, Zadie * Sontag, Susan * Souhami, Diana * Staël, Germaine de * Stein, Gertrude * Stowe, Harriet Beecher * Svendsen, Clara * Tencin, Madame de * Thomas, Alma * Thompson, Dorothy * Thurman, Judith * Tinguely, Jean * Toklas, Alice B. * Trollope, Fanny * Troubridge, Una * Turbeville, Deborah * Varda, Agnès * Walker, Alice * Walker, Margaret * Walker, Rebecca * Welty, Eudora * West, Rebecca * Wharton, Edith * White, Antonia * Whiteread, Rachel * Wilde, Dolly * Willis, Cornelia * Wolfe, Julia * Wollstonecraft, Mary * Wood, Thelma * Woolf, Virginia * Zittel, Andrea

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Knopf. With 54 illustrations.
416 pages. $24.95 ISBN 978-1-5247-3295-0


To interview the author, contact:
Kathy Zuckerman | 212-572-2105 | kzuckerman@penguinrandomhouse.com