Cathy Curtis is the author of four biographies of women. Her next book (forthcoming) is FEARLESS: A BIOGRAPHY OF EDNA O'BRIEN. A SPLENDID INTELLIGENCE: THE LIFE OF ELIZABETH HARDWICK (W. W. Norton, 2021; paperback, 2023) is the first biography of the brilliant American essayist, novelist, and short story writer who was married to the poet Robert Lowell. From the review by Sarah Wang, The Nation: "This is a book about an influential woman who shaped the literary landscape during her lifetime, and also a book about how that determination was influenced by what she endured in her personal life. . . . the biography is rich utterly dense, with Hardwick's ideas—often documented in correspondence with fellow writers." ALIVE STILL: NELL BLAINE, AMERICAN PAINTER (Oxford University Press, 2019; starred review from Booklist) is the story of a gay artist who believed she was at the top of her game in 1959, when she traveled to Greece to paint. She reveled in her new surroundings . . . until she contracted the most severe form of polio and had to be airlifted back to New York. Coping with life as a paraplegic at age thirty-seven, she was determined to regain her skills. Her newly colorful, rhythmically vibrant style illuminated the landscapes and still lifes that reflect her passion for the natural world. During the next three decades, she would become a notable painter and one of America's great watercolorists while living with her former nurse and subsequently embarking on a long relationship with the painter Carolyn Harris. A GENEROUS VISION: THE CREATIVE LIFE OF ELAINE DE KOONING — the first full-scale biography of the artist, writer, and vivacious social catalyst of New York artists in the 1950s and '60s, who was married to Willem de Kooning — inaugurated the Oxford Cultural Biographies Series in 2017. RESTLESS AMBITION: GRACE HARTIGAN, PAINTER (Oxford University Press, 2015) is the first biography of a leading Abstract Expressionist painter who felt adrift in the 1960s after moving with her medical researcher husband from New York to Baltimore, where she became a famously demanding art teacher. Long-listed for the 2016 Plutarch Award of Biographers International Organization (BIO); starred review from Booklist. A former staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, Curtis holds a master of arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a past president of Biographers International Organization.
