Drēma Drudge
Fun facts
I am obsessed with
true crime podcasts and TV shows. My show cues are probably frightening to
those who don’t know that and happen to see mine! Nearly every morning I listen
to Dateline’s podcast, and if they don’t upload one, I get disappointed.
I am terrified of roller coasters –
except for Space Mountain in Disneyland, because you’re mostly in the dark on it and
can’t see where you’re going. For some reason that makes it not as scary.
My favorite season is summer, to
the point where I get irritated at winter as if it’s out to get me.
Virginia Woolf is the writer I love
best – I have a bookcase full of her books and books about her. Actually, my
second novel (in progress) features her work.
I only live a couple of hours from
my dream retirement location, the Indiana Dunes, which is nice because I get to
visit it several times a year. (Unless Paris would become a viable option. In
that case, my husband and I might have to have two homes.)
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Victorine
In 1863, Civil War is raging in
the United States. Victorine Meurent is posing nude, in Paris, for paintings
that will be heralded as the beginning of modern art:
Manet's Olympia and Picnic
on the Grass.
However, Victorine's persistent
desire is not to be a model but to be a painter herself. In order to live
authentically, she finds the strength to flout the expectations of her parents,
bourgeois society, and the dominant male artists (whom she knows personally)
while never losing her capacity for affection, kindness, and loyalty.
Possessing both the incisive mind of a critic and the intuitive and
unconventional impulses of an artist, Victorine and her survival instincts are
tested in 1870, when the Prussian army lays siege to Paris and rat becomes a
culinary delicacy.
Drema Drudge's powerful first
novel Victorine not only gives this determined and gifted
artist back to us but also recreates an era of important transition into the
modern world.
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About the Author
Drēma Drudge suffers
from Stendhal’s Syndrome, the condition in which one becomes overwhelmed in the
presence of great art. She attended Spalding University’s MFA in Creative
Writing Program where she learned to transform that intensity into fiction.
Drēma has been
writing in one capacity or another since she was nine, starting with terrible
poems and graduating to melodramatic stories in junior high that her classmates
passed around literature class.
She and her husband,
musician and writer Barry Drudge, live in Indiana where they record their
biweekly podcast, Writing All the Things, when not traveling. Her first novel,
Victorine, was literally written in five countries while she and her husband
wandered the globe. The pair has two grown children.
In addition to
writing fiction, Drema has served as a writing coach, freelance writer, and
educator. She’s represented by literary agent Lisa Gallagher of Defiore and
Company.
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Where to Buy
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