About this item
For fans of Book of Ages and American Eve, this illuminating and enthralling biography of 19th-century queer actress Charlotte Cushman portrays her radical lifestyle that riveted New York City and made headlines across America. From the very beginning, she was a radical. At age nineteen, Charlotte Cushman, America's beloved actress and the country's first true celebrity, left her life - and countless suitors - behind to make it as a Shakespearean actress. After revolutionizing the role of Lady Macbeth in front of many adoring fans, she went on the road, performing in cities across a dividing America and building her fame. She was everywhere. And yet, her name has faded in the shadows of history. Now, for the first time in decades, Cushman's story comes to full and brilliant life in this definitive, exhilarating, and enlightening biography of the 19th-century icon.
About the Author
Tana Wojczuk is an editor at Guernica: A Magazine of Global Arts and Politics, teaches at at New York University and was formerly a course director in the Undergraduate Writing Program at Columbia University. An arts critic, she wrote a film column for Bomb Magazine and a column on American theatre for Guernica. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Tin House, The Believer, Apogee, Lapham's Quarterly, The Rumpus, Narrative, Opium, Smithsonian Magazine, The North American Review, The Chicago Review of Books, Refinery 29, Vice and Gulf Coast, where she was a finalist for the Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize. She has been a fellow at the NYU Global Scholars institute in Florence, Italy, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop in Portland, OR. Originally from Boulder, CO. she lives in Brooklyn, NY.
