Barbara Chase-Riboud is both an internationally acclaimed visual artist and award-winning poet. Chase-Riboud attained international recognition with the publication of her first novel, Sally Hemings, in 1979. The novel has been described as the "first full blown imagining" of Hemings' life as a slave and her relationship with Jefferson. In addition to stimulating considerable controversy, the book earned Chase-Riboud the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best novel written by an American woman and sold more than one million copies in hardcover. She has received numerous honors for her... work, including the Carl Sandburg Prize for poetry and the Women's Caucus for Art's lifetime achievement award. In 1965, she became the first American woman to visit the People's Republic of China after the revolution. In 1996, she was knighted by the French Government and received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She will be the subject of a major exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2013, and two anthologies of her poetry. She divides her time between Paris, Rome, and New York.
more