Virtual Event
Victoria Redel: I Am You
Opening the first pages of I Am You, you’ll be swept back to mid-1600s Amsterdam, the height of Dutch influence and artistic genius, where two women–a painter, Maria van Oosterwijck, and her family servant, Gerta Pieters–begin defying the norms of their time as they take on the male-dominated art world–and fall in love.
Inspired by the little that is known about the real painter Maria van Oosterwijck’s actual life, I Am You is a love story, a meditation on gender—the ways it binds and frees us—and an ode to artistic creation. As beautifully wrought as Oosterwijck’s paintings themselves (delicate, blazing in color, and at times enveloped in shadow), Redel’s new novel brings to life the copious spoils of Amsterdam’s Golden Age, and the perils that lay hidden within them for women like Maria and Gerta.
Victoria Redel
Victoria Redel has written four books of poetry, most recently Paradise; her last novel, Before Everything, was published in 2017. Her short stories, poetry and essays have appeared in Granta, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Bomb, One Story, Salmagundi, O,and NOON among many others. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center. She is a professor in the graduate and undergraduate creative writing programs at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City.
