THE LITERARY UNDOING OF VICTORIA SWANN By Virginia Pye
“Part of my research for this book was studying the lives of local female writers of the late 1800s.” Virginia Pye shared. “When I came across a three-sentence description of Gail Hamilton, a Concord writer of feminist essays who, in 1867, sued her publisher, Tinknor & Fields for underpaying her because she was a woman, I knew that my protagonist would need to fight as Hamilton had. Although Hamilton lost her case, it resonated throughout the publishing world at that time, but women continued to remain disadvantaged in the male-dominated industry.”
Victoria Swann is a successful author of popular romance and adventure novels who becomes a champion of women’s rights as she takes on the literary establishment and finds her true voice, both on and off the page. Everything changes for Victoria when she abandons writing the pulp fiction her publisher expects from her in order to tell her own authentic story. She loses her publisher’s regard, her income, her husband, and her home, and joins the legions of hard-working women who have been her most faithful readers in their fight for better pay and better working and living conditions. And in this LGBTQ-inclusive tale, her new, young, Harvard-educated editor becomes her unexpected ally, mentor and friend, while he himself finds the courage and freedom to love who he wants.
ABOUT VIRGINA PYE
Virginia Pye is an award-winning author of novels and short stories. Her short story collection, Shelf Life of Happiness, (Press 53) won the 2019 Independent Publisher Gold Medal for Short Fiction, and one of its stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Virginia’s debut novel, River of Dust, (Unbridled Books), was an IndieNext Pick and a 2013 Finalist for the Virginia Literary Award. Her second novel, Dreams of the Red Phoenix, (Unbridled Books), was named a Best Book of 2015 by the Richmond Times Dispatch. Virginia Pye grew up in Cambridge, MA and moved back after thirty-five years living up and down the East Coast.
