GERTRUDE STEIN: AN AFTERLIFE WITH FRANCESCA WADE

Author Francesca Wade discusses her new book Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, a 'literary detective story' as radical as its subject

Author Francesca Wade discusses her new book Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, a biography and a 'literary detective story' as radical as its subject.

In her revelatory new biography of Gertrude Stein, Francesca Wade reopens the strange case of one of the boldest and most divisive writers of the twentieth century. A novelist, poet, art collector and avant garde celebrité who hosted the likes of Hemingway and Picasso at her infamous Paris salons, Stein was admired and criticised in equal measure throughout her life... and beyond. Featuring newly unearthed archival material, Wade's book traces the Stein myth back to its radical roots, revealing new dimensions to her writing and to the storied relationship at the heart of her work, and layering a private portrait of Gertrude Stein as she was when nobody was watching; captivating, complicated and human.

An acclaimed biographer and literary critic, Francesca Wade published Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London Between the Wars, in 2020. She'll be talking about Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife in conversation with Diarmuid Hester, a cultural historian of gender and sexuality, and the author of Wrong: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper and Nothing Ever Just Disappears: Seven Hidden Histories.