Introduction
A Note About the Sequence
SOME WEIRDNESS
Octavia Butler
Yayoi Kusama
Elizabeth Bishop
Pina Bausch
Marisol
Nina Simone
Diane Arbus
OYSTERS AND CHAMPAGNE
Louise Nevelson
Isak Dinesen
Josephine Baker
Lillian Hellman
Coco Chanel
Elsa Schiaparelli
Martha Graham
Elizabeth Bowen
Frida Kahlo
Agnes de Mille
THE VORTEX
Louisa May Alcott
Radclyffe Hall
Eileen Gray
Isadora Duncan
Colette
Lynn Fontanne
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Tallulah Bankhead
Birgit Nilsson
Zora Neale Hurston
Margaret Bourke-White
BOREDOM AND SUFFERING
Marie Bashkirtseff
Germaine de Staël
Marie de Vichy-Chamrond
Dorothy Parker
Edna Ferber
Margaret Mitchell
Marian Anderson
Leontyne Price
Gertrude Lawrence
Edith Head
Marlene Dietrich
Ida Lupino
Betty Comden
PURE NEGLECT
Zoe Akins
Agnes Martin
Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Anne Porter
Bridget Riley
Julie Mehretu
Rachel Whiteread
Alice Walker
Carole King
Andrea Zittel
Meredith Monk
Grace Paley
A BALLOON, A SPACESHIP, A SUBMARINE, A CLOSET
Susan Sontag
Joan Mitchell
Marguerite Duras
Penelope Fitzgerald
Barbara Hepworth
Stella Bowen
Kate Chopin
Harriet Jacobs
Marie Curie
RESIGNATION AND RELIEF
George Eliot
Edith Wharton
Anna Pavlova
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Virginia Woolf
Vanessa Bell
Maggi Hambling
Carolee Schneemann
Marilyn Minter
Josephine Meckseper
Jessye Norman
Maggie Nelson
Nikki Giovanni
AN ABNORMAL LIFE
Anne Bradstreet
Emily Dickinson
Harriet Hosmer
Fanny Trollope
Harriet Martineau
Fannie Hurst
Emily Post
Janet Scudder
Sarah Bernhardt
Mrs. Patrick Campbell
A SUBTLE AND DEEP-LAID PLAN
Niki de Saint Phalle
Ruth Asawa
Lila Katzen
Helen Frankenthaler
Eileen Farrell
Eleanor Antin
Julia Wolfe
Charlotte Bray
Hayden Dunham
Isabel Allende
Zadie Smith
Hilary Mantel
Catherine Opie
Joan Jonas
DEADLY DETERMINATION
Marie-Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin
Elizabeth Carter
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Shelley
Clara Schumann
Charlotte Brontë
Christina Rossetti
Julia Ward Howe
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Rosa Bonheur
Eleanor Roosevelt
Dorothy Thompson
VIBRATIONS OF CHANCE
Janet Frame
Jane Campion
Agnès Varda
Françoise Sagan
Gloria Naylor
Alice Neel
Shirley Jackson
Alma Thomas
Lee Krasner
Grace Hartigan
Toni Cade Bambara
Margaret Walker
A PRIVILEGED SPACE
Tamara de Lempicka
Romaine Brooks
Eudora Welty
Elena Ferrante
Joan Didion
Sheila Heti
Miranda July
Patti Smith
Ntozake Shange
Cindy Sherman
Renee Cox
Petah Coyne
FROM RAGE TO DESPAIR AND BACK AGAIN
Djuna Barnes
Käthe Kollwitz
Lorraine Hansberry
Natalia Ginzburg
Gwendolyn Brooks
Jean Rhys
Isabel Bishop
Doris Lessing
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index