MOUNT VERNON — Author and activist Marge Piercy will read from her work and sign copies of her books at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 4, at Cornell College in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons. Admission is free.
An acclaimed novelist, essayist and poet, Piercy’s work includes her life experiences and addresses a number of social issues, particularly those dealing with gender and sexuality. Among Piercy’s novels is her most recent, “The Third Child,” described by Publishers Weekly as “ a biting, contemporary take on Romeo and Juliet and an acidic commentary on Washington political culture.”
Other novels include “Three Women,” which examines many social causes – labor, civil rights, feminism, abortion, environmentalism – in the lives of independent women across three generations of a family; “Sleeping With Cats,” her memoir; “City of Darkness, City of Light,” historical fiction about the French Revolution; and “The Longings of Women,” which looks at single women of differing ages and backgrounds.
Among books featuring her poetry are “ The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme,” which celebrates Piercy’s Jewish upbringing and connections, and the collection that won the American Library Association Notable Book Award, “ What Are Big Girls Made Of?”
Born and raised in working-class Detroit, Piercy was the first in her family to attend college, on a scholarship to the University of Michigan in the mid-1950s. She became politically active in the 1960s, joining the civil rights movement and becoming an organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. In 1969, concerned about the male power structure driving the anti-war movement, she turned her attention to the women’s movement.
“Almost alone among her American contemporaries, Marge Piercy is radical and writer simultaneously, her literary identity so indivisible that it is difficult to say where one leaves off and the other begins,” said a writer in the New York Times Book Review.
