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Winner of the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography.
"riveting in its illumination
of the...
conflicts and
contradictions of modern female authorship."
—Elaine Showalter, TLS
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Recent work
Toni Morrison talks about history, A Mercy, and the inauguration. >>
David McCullough's John Adams is the anti-Bush >>
Calvinism in America: Marilynne Robinson's Home >>
Love letters in a networked age >>
An interview with Russell Shorto >>
Eau de cologne for Ezra Pound: the letters of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell >>
Lisa Jardine on Dutch tolerance, June 2008 >>
Review of Kurt Vonnegut's uncollected fiction >>
Review of Manliness, by Harvey C. Mansfield >>
Germaine Greer's Shakespeare's Wife >>
Interview with Michael Chabon & Daniel Mendelsohn, Oct. 2007 >>
Review of The Dangerous Book for Boys >>
Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods and Doris Lessing's The Cleft >>
David Michaelis's Schulz and Peanuts >>
A brief talk about genre with Michael Chabon >>
Adventures of a biographer: Shoot the Widow >>
Cormac McCarthy and the dream of an empty world >>
| About Alice Sheldon
She was born in Chicago in 1915. As a child, she crossed Africa with her explorer parents. As an adult, she became a painter, a military intelligence officer, a CIA agent, an experimental psychologist. At age 51, Alice Bradley Sheldon made yet another change of career.
James Tiptree Jr. began writing science fiction in 1967. His stories were fast-paced and hard-boiled, his letters funny, frank, and sensitive. No one had ever seen him. No one knew his true identity. There were rumors he was a government spy. It wasn't until 1976 that the cover was blown on his alter ego: Alli Sheldon, a complex woman with an unusual past.
Alli Sheldon's use of a male voice not only demolishes assumptions about writing and gender, it also speaks to the mystery of the writing persona. Why could she only tell the truth about herself when she became someone else?
On the following pages you can find a few excerpts from James Tiptree, Jr., illustrated with images from the book plus new photos.
Read more >
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