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Sylvia Plath at Midyear, 2021

The first half of 2021 is in the rear view mirror. Sylvia Plath featured in every day for me, and maybe for you. In April and May, in the US and in the UK, respectively, readers were treated to the publication of Three-Martini Afternoons: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton (publisher's website). A new edition of Plath's poems is in the works for a 2024(ish) publication with Faber and Faber in London. Heather Clark's massive, commendable Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath was shortlisted for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. This is a phenomenal accomplishment and recognition for Clark's tome (publisher's website). Congratulations, Heather. Red Comet is a remarkable achievement. Paulina Bren published a biography of The Barbizon Hotel (publisher's website). Plath features a little bit in it, I am told.

On  14 June, Janet Malcolm, author of The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, passed away.

Here and there I was working on revisions to an essay on editing Plath's letters that is scheduled to be in the Bloomsbury Handbook to Sylvia Plath. It is an honor to be included in this volume, which grew out of the Sylvia Plath conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in November 2017. Publication date is scheduled for 21 April 2022 (Amazon). 

Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick and I should be seeing the final typeset proofs for our book The Collected Writings of Assia Wevill any day now. Which means we get to finalize the text, complete the index. I am so excited to do this! I built a skeletal index in October and November 2019, and the next step of inserting page numbers is like adding tendons, ligaments, muscles, and sinews to give it some body. Then, Julie and I can simply sit back and wait for mid-autumn. Our book is scheduled to be published by the LSU Press on 10 November 2021. Pre-order today!

All links accessed 29 March and 6, 11, and 17 June 2021.


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  1. Mary 13 November, 2021 10:58

    Have you read the Barbizon book? I just got to the part about the Mademoiselle summer and there’s a glaring error. On page 189 it references Plath’s arrival and says that her fellow editors were well aware of who she was because of her nationally publicized suicide attempt. That obviously didn’t happen until after her guest editorship.

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