March 26, 2002
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@sa.ucsb.edu

Best-selling novelist Susan Vreeland, author of The Passion of Artemisia and Girl in Hyacinth Blue, reads at Victoria Hall

Summary Facts:

• Susan Vreeland
• An Afternoon with the Author
• Best-selling author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue
• Author of the recently published The Passion of Artemisia
• Sunday, April 28
• 3 pm / Victoria Hall, 33 W. Victoria St., Santa Barbara
• General public $6 / UCSB students $5
• Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535

Susan Vreeland, best-selling author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue, will be reading from her latest novel The Passion of Artemisia on Sunday, April 28 at 3 pm in Victoria Hall, 33 W. Victoria Street, Santa Barbara. While Girl in Hyacinth Blue traces the fate of a Johannes Vermeer painting through the centuries, The Passion of Artemisia chronicles the extraordinary life of Artemisia Gentileschi, the first woman artist to paint important historical subjects and to be elected to the prestigious Accademia dell’Arte del Disegno in Florence. With the release of this new work, Vreeland has established herself as perhaps the finest historical novelist mining art history as a subject. The San Francisco Chronicle raves, “Vreeland’s remarkable ability to portray with lyricism and intelligence the life of an artist at both its most practical and most sublime makes this novel an accomplished work of art.”

Vreeland’s novel arrives just as a new wave of interest in Artemisia crests. The major exhibition “Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy” is currently on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Locally, Helena Hale will star in a one-woman show about the painter playing at Westmont College later this May. Artemisia is a beguiling figure. She was the first woman to make a significant contribution to art history, overcoming social conventions to assert herself as an artist and woman. Vreeland begins the novel with the notorious trial in which Artemisia’s father publicly accuses his colleague Agostino Tassi of raping his daughter. This public humiliation leads Artemisia into further disappointment—an arranged marriage to mediocre painter Pietro Stiatessi. Nonetheless, Artemisia struggles on, never the victim, developing her Caravaggio-like painting talents amidst the fertile art scene in Florence. Booklist states, “The Passion of Artemisia offers a vivid portrait of a complex female artist who doggedly pursues her passion despite overwhelming obstacles.”

Vreeland, a graduate of San Diego State University, has lived in San Diego since she was twelve. She taught high school English in the San Diego Unified School System for 30 years. She began writing features for newspapers and magazines in 1980, taking up subjects in art, travel, education and skiing. Her first book What Love Sees (published in 1988 and now out-of-print) was made into a CBS television movie starring Richard Thomas and Annabeth Gish.

Vreeland wrote Girl in Hyacinth Blue, which ended up a finalist for the 1999 Book Sense Book of the Year, largely as a way to deal with the pain of chemotherapy and other treatments as she fought lymphoma beginning in 1996. “As the stories took shape, I thought less and less of what I was going through, and more and more of the characters, lives, settings and circumstances I was creating,” she has written about the experience. “Creative endeavor can aid healing because it lifts us out of self-absorption and gives us a goal. Mine was to live long enough to finish this set of stories that reflected my sensibilities, so that my writing group of twelve dear friends might be given these and remember me and be proud of me in some small way.” Instead, she not only prevailed over cancer but also wrote a best-selling novel that won the Theodore Geisel Award presented by the San Diego Book Awards.

More information about Susan Vreeland can be found at www.svreeland.com.

This reading by Susan Vreeland is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, books by Susan Vreeland will be available for purchase and signing.

Ticket prices are $6 for the general public and $5 for UCSB students. Tickets are on sale in advance or may be purchased the afternoon of the reading, if available, beginning at 2 pm at Victoria Hall.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.