Events - Event View

Her Story: A Century of Women Writers at the National Portrait Gallery celebrates some of the country’s most influential authors. Represented in this exhibit are twenty-four women from diverse backgrounds whose books have become classics and whose words are well known. Many of us grew up with their stories, poems, and essays and have since passed them on to friends and family. Our docent will guide us on a virtual tour of the portraits of these beloved female authors.

Margaret Wise Brown’s Goodnight Moon (1947) is among the first books introduced to young children. The characters in Willa Cather’s My Ántonia (1918), Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street (1984), and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) remain vivid long after our encounters with them in the classroom.

Whether using their life experiences or powers of imagination, each of these women has contributed to the development of American literature in significant ways.

There will be a Q and A following the tour.