Dawn Powell: A Biography

In Dawn Powell: A Biography, Tim Page explores the fascinating ironies and sad complexities of Powell's life and work. Gore Vidal once referred to her as our best comic novelist, deserving to be as widely read as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. This biography is a celebration of her triumphant rise from the ashes of near oblivion to her establishment among the giants of twentieth-century American literature. Dawn Powell lived in New York City for forty-seven years but always maintained the perspective of a "permanent visitor." She distilled this into her many poems, stories, articles, plays, and her dizzying and inventive novels.

Tim Page is the Pulitzer Prize-winning chief music critic for The Washington Post. He is the editor of The Diaries of Dawn Powell and The Selected Letters of Dawn Powell (Holt, 0-8050-5364-6, $35.00). He lives in New York City.