Diane Wood Middlebrook

"Suits Me is the biography of a now notorious jazz musician named Billy Tipton, who grew up as Dorothy Tipton in Oklahoma City and Kansas City but lived as a man from the time she was nineteen until she died at age seventy-four. Billy Tipton's death in Spokane, Washington, made news all over the world, not because he was celebrated as a musician but because the scale of his deception - he had been "married" to five women and had reared several adopted children - and the scarcity of ready explanations endowed the skimpy available facts with the aura of myth." "But locked away in Billy's office closet lay files of clippings and photographs documenting the transformation of Billy from she to he, as well as a legacy of annotated comic routines, musical arrangements, and program notes. These revealed to Diane Wood Middlebrook how Billy scattered clues and riddles night after night about the drag she wore. These hints were so bold that they helped conceal Billy's secrets." "With brio and pathos, Suits Me tells the life story of this brilliant deceiver, who lived and loved in two skins, one of each sex."--BOOK JACKET.

After writing two extremely well received biographies--the first about Anne Sexton and the second about poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath--world-renowned scholar Diane Middlebrook's final project was a study of Ovid's work. Though he has been dead for over two thousand years and had left no personal records--not even the name of his mother--his poetry endures. Middlebrook was convinced that her intimate knowledge of Ovid's poetry and the approach she used in Her Husband (winner of the Prix Du Meilleur Livre Estranger), combined with a deep immersion into the Rome of Ovid's time, would enable her to write what could, without bragging, be called an Ovidian biography. However, severe health issues interfered with Middlebrook's work, and she was ultimately unable to complete this ambitious project before her death in 2007. She left behind an extraordinary look at the conditions and customs to which Ovid was exposed as a young Roman, as well as an acute interpretation of his family and personal life, gleaned from close readings of his poetry and letters from exile. Exhaustively researched and carefully constructed, Middelbrook's portrayal of Ovid is certain to be studied by scholars and read by historians for year to come.

A collection of letters written by poet Anne Sexton in which she describes her life, thoughts and feelings, with previously unpublished poems and family pictures and memorabilia.