WELCOME
Growing up in a literary family, I’d always expected to write books as my prolific novelist grandfather did. But for thirty years, working in international development while raising a family left me little time to write. It was only after I retired that I found the time. In 2017, I published Blood Too Bright, a book about my grandfather’s life in Greenwich Village. In November 2021, I published Expecting the World, a memoir about my years in Africa, Asia and South America working with village women. I also blog on topics as diverse as writing, art family, friends, traveling and living abroad.
Books
Expecting the World – Learning from Women in Left-Out Places is a memoir of my unlikely thirty-years in the male-dominated World Bank, taking a new approach to international development. It is an intimate account of my work and travel in the bustling cities and dusty villages in Africa, India, and Peru, and what I learned from the women there.
My story takes place in the last three decades of the twentieth century, encompassing world events that took place during those tumultuous years: the politics of oil, war in the Mideast, and the Egypt-Israeli peace accords of the 1970s; the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981; Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990; and the horror of September 11, 2001.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten*
One hundred years ago, Bohemian author and editor of the radical Masses magazine, Floyd Dell, began a passionate affair with a newcomer to Greenwich Village – the yet to be discovered “girl poet,” Edna St. Vincent Millay. In the years that followed, both Dell and Millay became symbols of early twentieth century feminism, rebellion, and literary freedom.
A century later, while poring over her grandfather Floyd’s papers at Chicago’s Newberry Library, Jerri Dell discovered hundreds of handwritten letters and an unpublished memoir about his love affair with Millay. Finding him as outlandish, entertaining, and insightful as he was when she knew him fifty years before, she chose to bring him and his poet lover back to life within the pages of this book.
My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night*
Admirers of Edna Millay, as well as Bohemian Village enthusiasts and readers interested in writers who famously influenced social norms, are sure to enjoy this eye-witness account of a fascinating woman and exceptional poet.
*Excerpts from Sonnet XLIII and First Fig by Edna St. Vincent Millay
BLOG
Azulejos
Azulejo is a lovely Portuguese word that rolls off the tongue in a way that its English translation "tile" just doesn’t. But in Portugal the azulejo is much more than a tile, it is iconic of Portuguese culture. For centuries, azulejos have embellished Portuguese...
Why I Blog
Blogging is such a 21st Century thing to do, but despite my 20th century reservations, a while ago I took the advice of my publisher and some of my younger friends and gave it a try. To be honest, though, I was truly convinced to blog only after I considered all the...
The Ghost of Edna St. Vincent Millay
One hundred and thirty years ago today Edna St. Vincent Millay – a remarkable, sometimes scandalous, and always brilliant poet, was born in Rockland, Maine. Twenty-five years later she moved to Greenwich Village, where she and my grandfather Floyd Dell – a...