Women Among Monuments - by Kasia Van Schaik (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A lyrical meditation on the enduring obstacles women artists and writers face in a world still unaccustomed to recognizing female genius.

Voted the "Next Picasso" in her rural high school's yearbook, South-African Canadian author Kasia Van Schaik considers what it means for a young woman to take up a mantle usually reserved for white heterosexual male genius. Drawing on a diverse web of literary and cultural sources and artistic icons, from Michelangelo to Ana Mendieta, Gauguin to Gertrude Stein, and Alice Walker to Alice Munro, Women Among Monuments asks what, beyond a room of one's own, are the necessary conditions for female genius? Where does the inner flint of artistic permission come from? What is the oxygen that keeps it burning?

Through her incisive biographies of female solitude, constraint, and perseverance, Kasia Van Schaik blazes a path for more inclusive artmaking practices, communities, and monuments.

About the Author

Kasia Van Schaik is the author of the linked story collection We Have Never Lived On Earth, which was longlisted for the Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Concordia First Book Prize and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature, the LA Review of Books, the Best Canadian Poetry, and the CBC. Kasia holds a PhD in English Literature from McGill University. She lives in Fredericton, where she teaches English and creative writing at the University of New Brunswick.