UNITED STATES AUTHOR · BIOGRAPHY
Diane Wood Middlebrook
Also known as: Diane W. Middlebrook
ONE SATURDAY MORNING in January 1989, an emergency call summoned paramedics to a trailer park on the outskirts of Spokane, Washington, the home of Billy Tipton, an aging white jazz musician.
— from Suits Me, 1998
Most acclaimed
Suits Me
1998
"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.
Her Husband
2003
"Evoking in vivid detail the literary world in Rome at the turn of the century. Her Husband tells the story of Silvia Roncella, a talented young female writer, and her husband Giustino Boggiolo. The novel opens with their arrival in Rome after having left their provincial southern Italian hometown following the success of Silvia's first novel, the rather humorously titled House of Dwarves. As his wife's self-appointed (and self-important) promoter, protector, counselor, and manager, Giustino becomes the primary target of Pirandello's satire. But the couple's relationship - and their dual career - is also complicated by a lively supporting cast of characters, including literary bohemians with avant-garde pretensions and would-be aristocratic aesthetes who are all too aware of the newly acquired power of journalists and the publishing establishment to make or break their careers. Having based many of the characters - including Silvia and Giustino - on actual literary acquaintances of his, Pirandello reacted to the novel's controversial reception by not allowing it to be reprinted after the first printing sold out. Not until after his death were copies again made available in Italy."--BOOK JACKET.
Young Ovid
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.