“The stories of these fascinating women, along with larger questions about art and democracy, will resonate with readers nearly a century later. Meticulous research paired with economical prose brings these artists’ powerful stories back to life.”—Library Journal, starred review

Friday Night Literary Lights! Award-winning historian, Lauren Arrington, discusses her new biography Bohemians on the Breadline: the Radical Women Artists of Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Roosevelt’s New Deal and the creation of the Works Progress Administration brought about social, economic, and cultural changes that still ripple through American society. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the extraordinary and unexamined histories of artists Alice Neel, Augusta Savage, Georgette Seabrooke, Lenore Thomas Straus, Elizabeth Olds, and Pablita Velarde. In Bohemians on the Breadline: The Radical Women Artists of Roosevelt’s New Deal, Lauren Arrington presents a captivating group biography of women who seized a unique opportunity and used it to produce work that challenged racism, capitalism, and inequality. Their enduring works of public art are a reminder of the turbulent and exciting lives they led.

For artists, employment through the WPA was a matter of survival. After the Wall Street crash in 1929, there was no longer a market for artists to make a living from their work and jobs in other sectors quickly dried up. For Alice Neel, a steady weekly income allowed her to rent her own apartment where she could leave behind volatile and abusive relationships. Elizabeth Olds felt her government wage “freed [her] from the ‘rat-race’ and competition of the market-place.” Government employment wasn’t just about creating art, it was also about teaching art. Augusta Savage and others gave back, sharing their gifts with their communities.

LAUREN ARRINGTON is the recipient of the Robert & Ina Caro Award from Biographers International Organization, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholars Award, and visiting research fellowships to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; Cambridge University; Boston College; and Trinity College Dublin.

Her writing has appeared in LitHub, the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Florida, Lauren lived in the U.K. and Ireland for twenty years before returning to her home state. She earned her doctorate at Oxford University.