Dear reader,

I fell in love with writing through my eyes, when my hand followed the elegant strokes of cursive letters that we imitated in the classrooms of Dan Emmett Elementary School in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. Through those letter forms, I acquired the connection between script and idea; between eye and hand, thus launching me into both writing and visual art. Later, then as the wife of a Wellesley College professor, I learned to set cold type and to print on the letterpresses of Wellesley’s Book Arts Lab in the ultimate joining of word and fine art. During the years when I was primarily a fine artist, I showed work from Austin’s Laguna Gloria Art Museum and to London’s National Portrait Gallery. I talked about it too: I was a Visiting Artist at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I taught medical students how books convey authority and had them write and illustrate their own books for ideal curricula.

The topic of my art was the interior of the human body, observed and portrayed in anatomy labs and morgues without medical training; seen as closely as possible like Renaissance medical explorers would have seen it when guided by their eyes alone. I wrote articles about my unique images and methods for medical humanities journals; I lectured about them at learned institutions (Northwestern University Medical School, Society for Literature and Science, Barnard College Feminist Art and Art History Conference, and Magdalene College Cambridge, among others).

Later, I wrote criticism about contemporary art and music in my online blog, Starr Review.

It is a testimony to the power of my liberal arts education at Kenyon College that the habits of thought I learned there have allowed me to participate at a high-level in any undertaking, including founding and running Upper Hand Press between 2011 and 2019. I closed it under the pressure of COVID, having published nine new authors.

Now, I am seeking representation for Mamie Swan, my own literary novel with LGBTQ interest. I am currently working on another novel with the working title of Deportations.

~

Continue to my writing portfolio

Author Artist Advocate

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EDUCATION

M.A., English, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1975.
A.B., magna cum laude, with Distinction in English, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, 1973.

CURRENT

Novel in progress: Deportations

I am currently working on another novel with the working title of Deportation. The wife of an esteemed professor, whose family lives in a house on campus, doesn’t realize that divorcing her husband means divorcing the college community. She learns that she has been an outcast among them all along.

Novel completed: Mamie Swan

When Mamie Swan enters Lewes College in 1970, she’s smarting from a childhood of adult responsibilities in a small-town with parochial parents. College proves a beautiful escape into the land of her dreams, where she can finally grow young. She does so, guided by free-spirited, imaginative Max Saylor, a gay sophomore who perceives her specialness. They become best friends in his antic adventures that relieve her of a lifelong sense of repression. But as friendship spills into love, her naïveté blinds her to his carefully unstated sexuality. Finally, a rival calls her a fag hag and discloses Max’s affair with another boy. Mamie must decide between rejecting her best friend—or growing up.

RECENT

Upper Hand Press, LLC. Owner and Publisher. Independent literary press, 2014-2020.

Selected, edited, and published 12 books, by new and established authors.

BOOKS

She Can Find Her Way: Women Travelers at Their Best, Editor, 2017. Four-volume anthology of essays by women who have traveled solo and encountered trouble on the road.
Sounding Our Depths: The Music of Morgan Powell, 2014. Criticism with 72-minute CD.

BLOG

Starr Review, (https://starr-review.blogspot.com).

Blog review of contemporary fine art and music, 2011-2016.
Finalist, Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grants for 2012.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

These examples reflect my engagement with art in several capacities.

“Music in Words: Is Music Criticism a Form of Translation?”, Levure littéraire no. 14 (2018)
“Long Life!,” Ars Medica: A Journal of Medicine, The Arts and Humanities, Vol 13, no. 21 (2018).
“What Won’t Kill You,” Eclectica, on-line magazine, October/November, 2011.
“Choosing My Own Doctor,” Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine. Ed. Howard Spiro. October 2001. Solicited article.
“leopardpeople/burning child,” introductory essay in Nils D. Dicaz, Leopardpeople: Eineinstallation in der Camp Gallery, Mt. San Angelo, Virginia, USA. Berlin: Lukas Verlag, 2000.
New Music Box, articles, 2009-2011:
- “Sounds Heard: “Spark of Being”—Music by Dave Douglas, Film by Bill Morrison,” April 2011.
- “Sounds Heard: Eric Lund—‘by the line of the arc that they form,’” February 2011.
- “Sounds Heard: Steve Butters—“Oomaharumooma,” October 2010.
- “Moving Away from the Center of Jazz: Thomas Wirtel, a.k.a. Thomas Shabda Noor,” August 2010.
- “Morgan Powell on the Creative Process: The Reality of Maborosi,” October 2009.
- “Interview with Morgan Powell,” Perfect Sound Forever, July 2009.
- Dancing with the Ramblers, The Tone Road Ramblers, Einstein Records, New York, 2008. Liner notes to music by Morgan Powell, John Fonville, and Eric Mandat.

SELECTED LECTURES

Cannibal Appetites. State University of New York at Cortland, 2004.
Reflections of a Mad Artist. D’Arcy Art Museum of the Loyola University of Chicago and Hektoen Institute for Medical Research, 2004.
Love in a Small Place: Straight Girl and Gay Boy in and out of the Closet. Kenyon College, 2002.
Medicine's Clinical Representations of Abnormal Human Bodies. Illustrated with clinical photographs and with slides of Starr’s visual art. Society for Literature and Science, Buffalo 2001.
Doctors and Patients in Visual Relation. Yale University School of Medicine, 2001.
The Body Inside Me. Illustrated with Starr’s visual art. Barnard College Feminist Art and Art History Conference, New York 2001.
Medical Normality or Social Normality? Images of Human Infants and Fetuses with Visible Physical Abnormalities.” Magdalene College, Cambridge, 2001.
“I Tell You No Lies: Narration from Bipolar Illness.” Davis Lecture in Medical Ethics. University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine; 7th International Congress on the History of Medicine, Galveston, Texas; Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Post-Doctoral Program, Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago, 2000.
The Artist, Her Doctor, and Relational Portraits. Illustrated with historical images and slides of Starr’s visual art. National Portrait Gallery, London. Cosponsored by the British Society for the History of Science; organized by Ludmilla Jordanova, 2000.
The Body: Sensation, Fantasy, and Medical Knowledge, Northwestern University Medical School, 1999.
Book Artists’ Round Table, organized by the Center for Book Arts, New York, at Connecticut College, 1999.
Under My Skin: Curriculum Vitae, Story, and the Book,” Pennsylvania State University, 1997.

GRANTS AND AWARDS

Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, residency, 2012
Finalist, Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Grants for Arts Writers, Blog category, 2012.
Richard J. Margolis Award of the Blue Mountain Center, Finalist, 2008.
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sweet Briar, Virginia. Artist residencies, 1996-2001, 2005, 2013.
The Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, Illinois. Artist residencies 1995-2007, 2018.
Reynolds Associates Fellowship, Historical Collections of the Lister Hill Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham Medical School, 2001.
Purchase prize awarded by Jan Howard, Eleventh Annual National Drawing and Print Competitive Exhibition, College of Notre Dame of Maryland, 1999.
Resident Research Grant, Francis Clark Wood Institute for the History of Medicine of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 1999.
Professional Development Grant, Massachusetts Cultural Council, 1998.
Purchase prize awarded by Janet Bishop, 1996 Stockton National Print and Drawing Exhibition.

TEACHING AND SERVICE

Teacher/Workshop Leader

School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Developed and taught “Artists and Mental Illness.” 2006.
Northwestern University Medical School. Classes on “Alternative Anatomy,” and “Inhabiting Authority,” through having students make their own medical books. 2004, 2003, 2001, 2000.
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, Medical Education Department, special topics seminar, “Alternative Anatomy.” 2001.
Pennsylvania State College of Medicine. National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute. 2002.
Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, Chicago. Clinical Pastoral Care Residency Program, workshop leader. 2001.

Visiting Artist

School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2006, 2005.
University of Chicago, 2000.
College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts, 2000.
Wellesley College, Massachusetts, 2000.
Pennsylvania State University, 1997.

Writing portfolio

Publisher, Upper Hand Press

Concerning Poetry

Free Ferry

Cadillac, Oklahoma

Rickie Trujillo

The Crime of Being

Books & Publications

Deportations
(Novel in Progress)

I am currently working on another novel with the working title of Deportation. The wife of an esteemed professor, whose family lives in a house on campus, doesn’t realize that divorcing her husband means divorcing the college community. She learns that she has been an outcast among them all along.

Mamie Swan
(Novel Completed)

When Mamie Swan enters Lewes College in 1970, she’s smarting from a childhood of adult responsibilities in a small-town with parochial parents. College proves a beautiful escape into the land of her dreams, where she can finally grow young. She does so, guided by free-spirited, imaginative Max Saylor, a gay sophomore who perceives her specialness. They become best friends in his antic adventures that relieve her of a lifelong sense of repression. But as friendship spills into love, her naïveté blinds her to his carefully unstated sexuality. Finally, a rival calls her a fag hag and discloses Max’s affair with another boy. Mamie must decide between rejecting her best friend—or growing up.

She Can Find Her Way:
Women Travelers at Their Best, 2017

In She Can Find Their Way: Women Travelers at Their Best, women of all ages tell true stories of their most memorable and challenging travel experiences: how they overcame adversity while traveling alone. These are the stories most women won't repeat when they get home, assuring parents and friends that everything was fine.

Come along to read what these twenty-two women encountered in Tunisian villages, in Amsterdam markets, and on Mt. Etna's rim; in central Pennsylvania's cornfields, and bike riding in Baja. Imagine yourself surveilled by a Native American on a horse as you explore a reservation uninvited, or find yourself the intended sexual plaything of grinning Israeli soldiers whose only language you understand is their guns.

Our authors find themselves unexpectedly intrepid and ingenious when they have to rely on themselves to get where they are going. Some of their stories of wit or worry, haplessness or perseverance will make you laugh; others will touch your heart as they face life crises that require relocation, lowered expectations, or grieving on the road. All demonstrate women's aptitudes for finding their ways with their own resources, ad-libbing with nerve and verve.

“What an inspired collection of travel essays! Once again, I'm reminded that travel is more about the journey than the destination. These volumes should be required reading for all women travelers. Or, for that matter, for anyone embarking on a globe-trotting adventure.”

—Clifford Garstang, editor of Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet

Sounding the Depths:
The Music of Morgan Powell, 2014

This is a book for readers concerned with the genesis and meaning of art in the broadest sense. Powell's music is the refined outcome of cumulative questions about the human condition, asked with uncompromising discipline and intellectual integrity.

Sounding Our Depths collects Starr's reviews and essays since 2009 about Powell and his muse, the Tone Road Ramblers sextet. These are dispersed among new essays based on interviews and study of Powell's notebooks.

New essays include

consideration of Powell's career from West Texas farm boy to major innovator in American composition
Powell's working process as suggested in notebooks and interviews
a survey of his works for solo instruments based on close listening.

Essays

A Challenge to the Profession: Dr. House
(PDF)

Looking in the Mirror: Images of Abnormally Developed Infants, Journal of Medical Humanities
(PDF)

Genius at work: Inside Aminah Robinson's World, Columbus Monthly magazine
(PDF)

Criticism

Starr Review

STARR REVIEW is my independent blog of reviews and critical essays about contemporary visual arts, music, and, occasionally, literature. I have posted three or four times monthly since August, 2011, focusing on events within a day's drive of my home in Columbus, Ohio.

Starr Review was a finalist in the 2012 competition Arts Writers Grant competition sponsored by Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation.

My area of the country is rich in encyclopedic museum collections, including the civic museums of Columbus, Dayton, Cleveland, Toledo, Akron, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Indianapolis. Powerhouse venues dedicated to contemporary art—in terms of programming and architecture both include the Cincinnati and Cleveland MOCAs, the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, and now the Pizzuti Collection, opened in 2013 in Columbus. I review art wherever I travel, too: There are articles from DC and Dakar; from Portland, Oregon and Palm Springs, California.

I review exhibitions or performances of local, national, and international origin. The Review has an international readership, as well as strong local and national audiences.

By going directly to STARR REVIEW, you may browse through the archive month by month, or consult the labels, listed at the bottom of the screen, to get a sense of what I have written about. These are sample articles:

The Critic

THE CRITIC is not the gatekeeper or the triage manager. It's my job to consider art and to be as available as possible to the thought and experience invested in it. I stretch to discover what has moved the artist, and to connect that with my own and with common experience.

I want to encourage people to come to art works unburdened by received, ill-digested rules of engagement. I try to eliminate jargon and academic language, and to illustrate my discussions thoroughly with photos. My hope is to model approaches to art for readers who may believe themselves so 'untrained' and 'unqualified' that they are 'ineligible' to have deep or genuine personal experiences of art. The language of academic explanation, which can discourage museum and gallery visitors, sometimes supports such defeated attitudes.

I do believe that art is personal, though: It's in the world and as available to the viewer as anything else to be encountered in life. No one but the person who is there and looking owns the experience of art. It's from that point of view that I write.

For any artist who reads my review of his or her work, I try to describe what I see and how I react to it mentally and physically. When I offer my interpretation, I know that it may serve only to remind the artist that the work is on its own once it's been released to the public. I realize that my thoughts may seem quite wrong-headed, even as I support them. Above all, I want to deliver a serious consideration, whatever the artist may make of it. It's a gift of my time and scrutiny, due from any viewer to any artist, even when it can be in thought only.

Art Reviews

In the years prior to beginning STARR REVIEW, I wrote art reviews for The Other Paper, a Columbus weekly that has since ceased publication. I have also written freelance for the national webzine of the American Music Center, NewMusicBox: