Cathy marie buchanan biography samples

It was an honour to meet the author of The Painted Girls which was chosen for the 11th annual One Book, One Brant.  This County of Brant Library program reported 360 individuals had signed up to read the book and many of these readers attended the event to get their book signed by the author today.

Kathy Marie Buchanan grew up in Niagara Falls but had ties to Brant County.  She had spent time visiting her maternal grandparents just outside Burford, even enjoying trips to the Lion’s Park in Paris (this is a memory we share as I loved going to this park with my grandparents and have enjoyed it with my own children)!  She pointed out her own mother in the crowd!

The author had the crowd chuckling when she talked about the #1 question she is asked:  Did you always want to be a writer?  In fact, she emphatically said that no, she had not wanted to be a writer.  She shared that she disgraced herself in high school english which was her lowest mark and that she is a terrible speller.  In university, she chose her courses carefully, never once writing an essay and graduating with a degree in biochemistry.  She worked in finance and technical sales until “her world shifted” when spell check became mainstream and she began to wordsmith documents.

She told the audience that she had always had an artistic side, studying classical ballet in high school, sewing and designing her own clothes and taking creative continuing education courses as an adult.  She ended up in a creative writing course where her first assignment was to describe her childhood room in one page and was hooked.  This led to her first book, The Day the Falls Stayed Still in 2009.

Trying squeeze in writing time while working and raising 3 boys was a challenge and she ended up making the decision to write full-time.  In the first year, she published a handful of short stories and collected

In “The Painted Girls,” a carefully researched, deeply imagined historical novel by Canadian writer Cathy Marie Buchanan, the Belle Époque comes to vibrant, often aching life. It follows two real-life destitute sisters, Marie and Antoinette van Goethem, who are forced to turn to the then-none-too-reputable ballet training program at the Paris Opera to scratch out a meager living in the 1870s and ’80s. Antoinette, older and prettier but less artistically gifted, becomes involved with a rough-hewn teenager destined for a life of crime.

Marie, less beautiful but blessed with a supple body and an artistic soul, catches the eye of the great Impressionist painter Edgar Degas, who immortalizes her — for good or ill — in his famous sculpture “Little Dancer Aged 14,” which critics greeted as the portrait of a girl whose facial features marked her as predisposed toward a life of moral turpitude.

This piece first ran in Printers Row Journal, delivered to Printers Row members with the Sunday Chicago Tribune and by digital edition via email. Click here to learn about joining Printers Row.

Printers Row Journal caught up with Buchanan, a former ballet dancer, by phone from her home in Toronto. Here’s an edited transcript.

Q: What was the origin of “The Painted Girls”?

A: I saw a television documentary in 2007 or so called “The Private Life of a Masterpiece,” which focused exclusively on Degas’s “Little Dancer Aged 14.” I knew the work but nothing about its history. For example, the documentary went into the reception the sculptor got when it was exhibited, the girl who had modeled for the piece, the culture of the ballet at the time. I was absolutely fascinated that when it was exhibited, the viewers didn’t see a young girl in her ballet clothes. They saw a whore. The reaction was very much that she was “a flower of the gutter,” and that you could see the

Synopsis~

A heartrending, gripping novel set in belle époque Paris and inspired by the real-life model for Degas’s Little Dancer Aged 14 and by the era’s most famous criminal trials.

Following their father’s sudden death, the Van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without his wages, and with the small amount their laundress mother earns disappearing into the absinthe bottle, eviction seems imminent. With few options for work, Marie is dispatched to the Paris Opéra, where she will be trained to enter the famous Ballet and meet Edgar Degas. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds employment—and the love of a dangerous young man—as an extra in a stage adaptation of Émile Zola’s Naturalist masterpiece L’Assommoir.  Set at a moment of profound artistic, cultural, and societal change,The Painted Girls is a tale of two remarkable sisters rendered uniquely vulnerable to the darker impulses of “civilized society.” (from Riverhead Books)

Review~

The Painted Girls, by Cathy Marie Buchanan, is not just the story of the famous Impressionist Edgar Degas’ paintings and sculptures, or of the French Opera House and Ballet post revolution, but rather, a story of the depths of sociology, psychology, and the desire of human nature to judge and categorize.  However, it’s also the story of overcoming odds, circumstances, and even predestined labels, showing that humankind is redeemable and that people can overtake insurmountable boundaries.

The Painted Girls is an astonishing look inside the poignant world of art, dance, and the modern world of post-revolution France.  Intellectually, it made me contemplate and left a lasting impression, while emotionally, it broke my heart and then reclaimed it by the end.

I first wanted to read this book primarily not just for my fondness of history, but also my admiration for Impressionist artist Dega

Cathy’s comments from the Cathy Marie Buchanan Hosts a Q&A group.

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