Poet Linda Rogers, photographer Barbara Pedrick, and their subjects collaborate in this collection of lives in art. Based on candid interviews and long-term friendships, Rogers presents vivid, personal accounts of women in the Canadian artistic community.

This richly illustrated book follows the stories of thirty women as they overcome pain, politics, and prejudice to sing, dance, act, write, and paint toward the new millennium. Every story of these mothers of artistic freedom is at once intimate and inspirational. Like Renaissance murals full of contemporary faces, this is a broad canvas of familiar heads talking.

Featured are Angela Addison, Comfort Adesuwa, Sister Eileen Curteis, Daisy DeBolt, Finola Fogarty, Lina de Guevera, Hilda Hale, Emily Hearn, Elisabeth Hopkins, Inge Israel, Maggie Jack, Dorothy Livesay, Barbara Livingston, Pat Martin Bates, Rona Murray, Susan Musgrave, P. K. Page, Jody Paterson, Myfanwy Pavelic, Barbara Pedrick, Eurithe Purdy, Lynda Raino, Jane Rule, Sheila Ryan, Carole Sabiston, Carolyn Sadowska, Phyllis Serota, Phyllis Webb, Claire Weissman Wilks, and Adele Wiseman.

Many stories are told for the first time in this book. Even an artist, used to revelation, needs courage to dance through the final veil, her personal history. We have trusted one another to make this mural, which, we hope, will also reflect the lives and struggles of those who read it.— From the Introduction

Art/Biography/Women's Studies, 176 pp, 9 x 8, 50+ b/w and colour photos and art reproductions
ISBN 1-55039-097-X, paper, $24.95