We are delighted to welcome back best-selling author Debra Dean (Madonnas of Leningrad, The Mirrored World), who will talk about her new biography, Hidden Tapestry: Jan Yoors, His Two Wives, and the War That Made Them One. Debra will be at the store on Thursday, July 19, at 6:30pm.
Hidden Tapestry reveals the unforgettable story of Flemish American artist Jan Yoors—childhood vagabond, wartime resistance fighter, and urban bohemian. At the peak of his fame in the 1970s, Yoors’s photographs and vast tapestries inspired a dedicated following in his adopted Manhattan. Though his intimate friends guessed the rough outline of his colorful life, Hidden Tapestry is first to detail his astonishing secrets. A luminous and inspiring account of resilience, resourcefulness, and love.
"Debra Dean puts the stitches in the rich tapestry that was Jan Yoors’s life, surely one of the most remarkable artistic stories of the twentieth century. She reveals his incredible life of exploration, adventure, and heroism, as well as his truly unique ménage. I’m hugely impressed with her research and writing—and green with envy that she found such a fascinating subject to write about.” –Ross King, author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and Mad Enchantment
“It’s rare when an extraordinary artist wins a biographer of equal quality. As someone who admired Jan Yoors greatly and once spent a few days in his unusual household, I’m delighted to see this story told with grace, with careful research, and with such compassion for the women who were an invisible part of his work.” —Adam Hochschild, author of Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son, and King Leopold's Ghost
"In Hidden Tapestry, Debra Dean dives into the artist’s singular backstory and the equally compelling stories of his wives, Annabert van Wettum and Marianne Citroen. This is a well-researched, well-written, and unusual biography. . . There’s a fascinating story here, and Dean tells it well." —Foreword Magazine
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Seattle native Debra Dean is the bestselling author of four critically acclaimed books that have been published in twenty-one languages. Her debut, The Madonnas of Leningrad, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice novel, a #1 Booksense Pick, a Booklist Top Ten Novel, and an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year. It was long listed for the IMPAC International Dublin Literary Award. Confessions of a Falling Woman, a collection of short fiction, won the Paterson Fiction Prize and a Florida Book Award.
A graduate of Whitman College and the MFA program at the University of Oregon, Dean lives in Florida with her husband, and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing program at Florida International University.
