Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes, c. 1921
Born	June 12, 1892 Storm King Mountain, Orange County, New York, U.S.
Died	June 18, 1982(1982-06-18) (aged 90) New York City, U.S.
Pen name	Lydia Steptoe A Lady of Fashion Gunga Duhl, the Pen Performer[1]
Occupation	Novelist poet journalist artist
Literary movement	Modernism
Notable works	Ladies Almanack (1928) Nightwood (1936)

Djuna Barnes (/ˈdʒuːnɑː/ JOO-nah; June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel Nightwood (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist literature.^[2]

In 1913, Barnes began her career as a freelance journalist and illustrator for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.^[3] By early 1914, Barnes was a highly sought feature reporter, interviewer, and illustrator whose work appeared in the city's leading newspapers and periodicals.^[4] Later, Barnes's talent and connections with prominent Greenwich Village bohemians afforded her the opportunity to publish her prose, poems, illustrations, and one-act plays in both avant-garde literary journals and popular magazines, and publish an illustrated volume of poetry, The Book of Repulsive Women (1915).^[4][5]

In 1921, a lucrative commission with McCall's took Barnes to Paris, where she lived for the next 10 years.^[4] In this period she published A Book (1923), a collection of poetry, plays, and short stories, which was later reissued, with the addition of three stories, as A Night Among the Horses (1929), Ladies Almanack (1928), and Ryder (1928).^[6]

During the 1930s, Barnes spent time in England, Paris, New York, and North Africa.^[7] It was during this restless time that she wrote and published Nightwood. In October 1939, after nearly two decades living mostly in Europe, Barnes returned to New York.^[8] She published her last major work, the verse play The Antiphon, in 1958, and she died in her apartment at Patchin Place, Greenwich Village in June 1982.^[9][10]