IF YOU WANT TO RIDE A HORSE, a picture book illustrated by Gael Abary, will be published in 2024.
Georgia In Hawaii...In the Bronx!
A week after arriving home from Kauai, I flew with my mom to Manhattan to catch the tail-end of the Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of Hawaii show at the New York Botanical Garden. On a cool fall day, we walked through the warm, tropical greenhouse filled with Hawaiian flora and stood before all of Georgia’s Hawaiian paintings, displayed together for the first time since their original showing at Alfred Stieglitz’s upper midtown gallery, An American Place, in 1940.
Aloha, Georgia!
Girl on a Jet Plane
Last fall, I traveled to France to meet the subject of a new book, Girl on a Motorcycle (Abrams, Fall 2020). Unlike the subjects of all my other books, this one—author, adventurer, bad ass, Anne-France Dautheville—is alive and well. And so I jumped on an SFO-CDG bound jet plane to meet her.
I found Anne-France in a New York Times Magazine piece. A rosy vintage photograph of a gorgeous girl in a flower-print dress, driving a motorbike. In the 1970s, the decade I was born, Anne-France Dautheville left her life in Paris, hopped on a motorcycle, rode across the world, mostly solo, and never looked back. J'ai envie que le monde soit beau, et il est beau. J'ai envie que les gens soient bons, et ils sont bons. I want the world to be beautiful, and it is beautiful. I want people to be good, and they are good. AFD was rediscovered recently by English fashion designer, Claire Waight-Keller, who created an entire collection inspired be her new muse, for Parisian couture house, Chloé.
C'est tout. I contacted Anne-France, wrote the story, Abrams bought it, and I flew alone to Paris. A rare perk of my work, for sure: a room—little more than bed, writing desk and French windows—overlooking Rue du Bac, in the 7th arrondissement. . . .And then, off to Saint-Cyr sur Morin, a small village an hour outside of Paris, where I spent two nights, meeting a real-life heroine. The world is beautiful, good.
A Cloth Lullaby
I was lucky to be able to travel to Manhattan not only to see my beloved book editor Tamar Brazis at Abrams, and to meet with MoMA about a new book, but to visit the incredibly lovely Louise Bourgeois exhibit at MoMA, featuring the work that inspired my book, CLOTH LULLABY.
ILLUSTORIA: The Bookish and Dreamy Amy Novesky
Best headline ever. Thank you to Joanne Chan and her inspired team for the interview in the latest, gorgeous issue of ILLUSTORIA magazine.
Headliner
It's been a good week for Cloth Lullaby: a third starred review, this one from The Horn Book ("Novesky returns to territory in which she shines"), a lovely review in The New York Times, my first ever, written by the marvelous Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, who says, "Cloth Lullaby is one of the loveliest picture books I've encountered," as well as a lovely review in Brain Pickings, itself. And a feature I wrote for The Guardian. Wow.
What I Love in Books, Inc's March newsletter
Poem of the Day
Cover Girl
I was surprised and delighted to see the cover of Abrams Books for Young Readers' spring catalog. Cloth Lullaby, The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois, will be published March 1st!
Coming Soon! Cloth Lullaby
My new book, Cloth Lullaby, The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois, illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault, will be published by Abrams Books for Young Readers in May, 2016. It is a beautiful book. I can't wait to share it.