Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Karen Essex is an award-winning novelist and journalist and a screenwriter.
She is the author of the national and international best-selling novel,
Leonardo’s Swans (Doubleday 2006), about the rivalries among the powerful
women painted by the great master when he was employed by the Duke of Milan. She
has also written two acclaimed biographical novels about the queen of Egypt,
Kleopatra and Pharaoh, published in 2001 and 2002, which she
adapted into a screenplay for Warner Bros. Essex also adapted Anne Rice’s novel
The Mummy or Ramses the Damned into a screenplay for Titanic
director James Cameron and 20th Century Fox, and has written a screenplay about
Kamehameha, the first king of Hawaii, for Columbia/Tristar.
Essex’s articles, essays and profiles have been published in Vogue, Playboy,
The L. A. Weekly, L. A. Style, and many other periodicals. After being
awarded highest honors from the Los Angeles Press Club for her thought-provoking
cover story about the missing 1950s pinup icon Bettie Page, Essex co-authored
the biography, Bettie Page: Life of a Pinup Legend. Essex is the first
and only journalist with whom the reclusive Ms. Page has ever agreed to meet and
cooperate.
Essex was born and raised in New Orleans. She graduated from Tulane University,
attended graduate school at Vanderbilt University, and received an MFA in
Writing from Goddard College in Vermont. She’s appeared on The Today Show
and A Word on Words hosted by John Seigenthaler, as well as other PBS
and NPR programs. She’s lectured at the Chicago Museum of Art, and extensively
at universities. Her books are taught in many college courses from creative
writing to history to women’s studies.
Leonardo’s Swans, a runaway bestseller in Italy, won the prestigious
2007 Premio Roma for foreign fiction. Her forthcoming novel, Stealing
Athena, about the controversial Elgin Marbles, was published by
Doubleday in June 2008. She is also the author of Dracula in Love: A Novel (2010).
Essex’s novels are published in 25 languages. She lives in Los Angeles.
Karen Essex's website
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Leonardo's Swans reveals the drama behind some of Leonardo da
Vinci's most famous paintings, but the story is told through the points of view
of the rivaling Este sisters. Why did you choose to tell it this way?
Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, princesses of Ferrara, were women of
enormous influence in the Renaissance courts. They ruled with–and in the stead
of–their husbands, acted as diplomats and ambassadors, patronized great artists,
and influenced fashion. Isabella's patronage enabled titans of art like Titian,
Mantegna, and Raphael to flourish. Yet the history books fail to mention these
fascinating woman unless in a perfunctory way as wives of powerful men. I
thought that their stories deserved to be brought to modern readers.
Most chapters of Leonardo's Swans begin with notebook entries
attributed to Leonardo. Did you invent these sections?
These excerpts are from Leonardo's notebooks and letters. Some have
been paraphrased or rewritten to be more palatable to the contemporary reader,
and occasionally, I invented a sentence to give context. Leonardo is such a
towering figure–and a controversial one–that I wanted the portrait of him to be
drawn from ...
Vanora Bennett became a journalist almost by accident. Having learned Russian and been hired after university by Reuters, she was catapulted out of the classical-music life of her family and straight into the adrenaline-... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Leonardo's Swans
Try:
Portrait of an Unknown Woman
by Vanora Bennett
Tracy Chevalier was born in Washington, DC but has lived in England all her adult life. She now has dual citizenship. She has a BA in English from Oberlin College, Ohio and an MA in creative writing from the University of ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Leonardo's Swans
Try:
The Lady and the Unicorn
by Tracy Chevalier
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