American · 1892–1982
Djuna Barnes was an American writer and artist who lived in New York, Paris and London before settling in Greenwich Village. She began as a journalist and illustrator in New York, writing interviews and newspaper features, and she belonged to the circle of expatriate modernists in 1920s Paris. Her books include Ryder (1928), the privately printed Ladies Almanack (1928), a satire of a Parisian lesbian circle, and Nightwood (1936), her best-known novel, which T.S. Eliot introduced for its first publication. She also wrote poems, short stories and plays, among them The Antiphon (1958). From the 1940s she lived in near seclusion in her Patchin Place apartment, rarely giving interviews. Her baroque style and frank treatment of desire set her apart from her contemporaries. Nightwood is still read as a landmark of modernist and queer literature.