Virginia Pye will speak about her novel, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, and her research into the "New Women" of the late 1800s who changed the face of publishing and books forever. Dime novels and other romance tales sold in the hundreds of thousands and helped young women find forbidden information for services and products illegal under the Comstock Laws. Voracious women readers and prolific women writers hold the key to understanding parallels to today

Virginia Pye is the author of four award-winning books of fiction, including two post-colonial historical novels set in China, River of Dust and Dreams of the Red Phoenix, and the short story collection, Shelf Life of Happiness. Her most recent novel, The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann, is a love story to writers and readers set in Gilded Age Boston. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Literary Hub, Publisher’s Weekly, Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. Virginia holds an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA from Wesleyan University. A Tin House Summer Workshop scholar, fellow at the Virginia Quarterly Review Conference, and a repeat fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Virginia has taught writing at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, and, most recently, at Grub Street in Boston. She is Fiction Editor at the literary journal Pangyrus and serves on the boards of the Women’s National Book Association, Boston Chapter and History Cambridge. Visit her at: https://www.virginiapye.com/

Sponsered by the Friends of the Wellesley Free Library