	Fiction Non-Fiction Poetry Film Art MEB Authors Press Events Distribution Contacts	A PERFECTLY PAINTED SELF-PORTRAIT Spuyten Duyvil Presents the First Collection of Writings by One of Late 20th Century’s Most Exquisite Unheard Literary Voices New York, NY, May 3, 2004 — All is revealed in *Notes of a Nude Model & other pieces, the new collected works of literary and cultural icon Harriet Sohmers Zwerling. Just published by New York’s Spuyten Duyvil, the book contains fourteen stories of Beat Era freedom and excess tempered with compassion and stark realism. Part memoir, part third person story, Harriet Sohmers Zwerling recalls her life on the edge surrounded by writers and artists of the 50’s & 60’s. Known primarily for her bohemian life as a peer of Norman Mailer, Seymour Krim, Alfred Chester, Susan Sontag, and Maria Irene Fornes among others, as well as for being the associate editor for the legendary Provincetown Review, Harriet Sohmers Zwerling is also a tragically undervalued writer. Notes of a Nude Model* is the first attempt to collect her assorted writings throughout the last fifty years. The book begins with “Notes of a Nude Model,” which first appeared in 1961, in which Zwerling describes the strange Zen-like feeling of posing nude as an artist's model: “I stand there naked before them. They look at me. But amazingly, they do not, as in a nightmare, either mock, berate or ignore me. I stand among them all innocence, like a statue in a park—exempt from the punishment of Eve which covered our bodies forever.” One of the fruits of the labor that Zwerling meticulously describes graces the book's cover. No subject is taboo and each one is chronicled in extreme vivid detail, such as the two very different pregnancies of “Hello, Baby” and the substance abuse and debauchery of “A Night Out” and “Kicking.” Throughout the entire book, sexuality is related with the lyrical grace and ease that renders it natural and beautiful, even in the face of its casual and often anonymous nature. Memories of individuals significant throughout the author’s life come alive in Notes of a Nude Model, from the two portrayals of her husband, merchant seaman and bohemian Louis Zwerling, toward the end of his life (“The Home”) and afterwards (“Ashes”), to assorted lovers (“Khaleel”), pets (“My Dog Max”), and friends (“Remembering Alfred Chester”). Award-winning poet and editor Edward Field writes in the Introduction, “[Harriet’s] central quality, demonstrated in every one of these tales, is that she has never held back from anything life offered.” The stories in Notes of a Nude Model paint a portrait of a woman unencumbered by any of life’s constraints. The depiction is naked and stunning. Born and raised in Manhattan, Harriet Sohmers Zwerling attended NYU, Black Mountain College, and Berkeley. After dropping out of academia, she arrived in Paris in 1950 and remained in Europe for nine years. During this time, she made a living working at the International Herald Tribune and doing freelance translating. Three of her pieces were published by New Story Magazine, along with works by writers such as James Baldwin and Alison Lurie. During this time she was involved in a number of liaisons with both men and women, author/critic Susan Sontag among them. Upon her return to the United States in 1959, she became involved with the Beat scene both in New York and Provincetown, MA. She became the associate editor for the Provincetown Review, which was scandalized and brought to trial on pornography counts for publishing excerpts from the late Hubert Selby Jr.’s controversial (and now classic) Last Exit to Brooklyn. Zwerling’s writing from this era was published in Swank Magazine, as well as the anthology The Bold New Women (Fawcett). She married Louis Zwerling in 1968 and has spent the last forty years teaching in Manhattan and Brooklyn, raising her son Milo, traveling, and writing many of the pieces that make up Notes of a Nude Model. Zwerling is featured in filmmaker Deirdre Fishel’s documentary Still Doing It: The Intimate Lives of Women Over 65, which explores the intimate lives of older women, and was recently shown at the Museum of Television and Radio.

A PERFECTLY PAINTED SELF-PORTRAIT

Spuyten Duyvil Presents the First Collection of Writings by

One of Late 20th Century’s Most Exquisite Unheard Literary Voices

New York, NY, May 3, 2004 — All is revealed in Notes of a Nude Model & other pieces, the new collected works of literary and cultural icon Harriet Sohmers Zwerling. Just published by New York’s Spuyten Duyvil, the book contains fourteen stories of Beat Era freedom and excess tempered with compassion and stark realism. Part memoir, part third person story, Harriet Sohmers Zwerling recalls her life on the edge surrounded by writers and artists of the 50’s & 60’s.

Known primarily for her bohemian life as a peer of Norman Mailer, Seymour Krim, Alfred Chester, Susan Sontag, and Maria Irene Fornes among others, as well as for being the associate editor for the legendary Provincetown Review, Harriet Sohmers Zwerling is also a tragically undervalued writer. Notes of a Nude Model is the first attempt to collect her assorted writings throughout the last fifty years.

The book begins with “Notes of a Nude Model,” which first appeared in 1961, in which Zwerling describes the strange Zen-like feeling of posing nude as an artist's model: “I stand there naked before them. They look at me. But amazingly, they do not, as in a nightmare, either mock, berate or ignore me. I stand among them all innocence, like a statue in a park—exempt from the punishment of Eve which covered our bodies forever.” One of the fruits of the labor that Zwerling meticulously describes graces the book's cover.

No subject is taboo and each one is chronicled in extreme vivid detail, such as the two very different pregnancies of “Hello, Baby” and the substance abuse and debauchery of “A Night Out” and “Kicking.” Throughout the entire book, sexuality is related with the lyrical grace and ease that renders it natural and beautiful, even in the face of its casual and often anonymous nature.

Memories of individuals significant throughout the author’s life come alive in Notes of a Nude Model, from the two portrayals of her husband, merchant seaman and bohemian Louis Zwerling, toward the end of his life (“The Home”) and afterwards (“Ashes”), to assorted lovers (“Khaleel”), pets (“My Dog Max”), and friends (“Remembering Alfred Chester”).

Award-winning poet and editor Edward Field writes in the Introduction, “[Harriet’s] central quality, demonstrated in every one of these tales, is that she has never held back from anything life offered.” The stories in Notes of a Nude Model paint a portrait of a woman unencumbered by any of life’s constraints. The depiction is naked and stunning.

Born and raised in Manhattan, Harriet Sohmers Zwerling attended NYU, Black Mountain College, and Berkeley. After dropping out of academia, she arrived in Paris in 1950 and remained in Europe for nine years. During this time, she made a living working at the International Herald Tribune and doing freelance translating. Three of her pieces were published by New Story Magazine, along with works by writers such as James Baldwin and Alison Lurie. During this time she was involved in a number of liaisons with both men and women, author/critic Susan Sontag among them.

Upon her return to the United States in 1959, she became involved with the Beat scene both in New York and Provincetown, MA. She became the associate editor for the Provincetown Review, which was scandalized and brought to trial on pornography counts for publishing excerpts from the late Hubert Selby Jr.’s controversial (and now classic) Last Exit to Brooklyn. Zwerling’s writing from this era was published in Swank Magazine, as well as the anthology The Bold New Women (Fawcett).

She married Louis Zwerling in 1968 and has spent the last forty years teaching in Manhattan and Brooklyn, raising her son Milo, traveling, and writing many of the pieces that make up Notes of a Nude Model. Zwerling is featured in filmmaker Deirdre Fishel’s documentary Still Doing It: The Intimate Lives of Women Over 65, which explores the intimate lives of older women, and was recently shown at the Museum of Television and Radio.