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A lyrical meditation on the enduring obstacles women artists and writers face in a world still unaccustomed to recognizing female genius.
What does it take for a woman to don the mantle of genius — a title long reserved for male artists? From her studies in Montreal to a dead-end job in Berlin, a midnight tour of Paris, a bankrupt art residency on the Toronto Islands, and a mysterious sculpture garden in the Karoo desert, South African–Canadian author and professor Kasia Van Schaik considers what it means for a young woman to call herself an artist and claim a creative life.
Drawing on a diverse web of literary and cultural sources and artistic icons — from Georgia O'Keeffe to Ana Mendieta, Gertrude Stein to Jamaica Kincaid, Leslie Marmon Silko to Bernadette Mayer — Women Among Monuments asks, What, beyond a room of one's own, are the necessary conditions for female genius? Where does the inner flint of artistic permission come from? What is the oxygen that keeps it burning?
In her memoir interwoven with incisive biographies of female solitude, constraint, and perseverance, Van Schaik blazes a trail for more inclusive artmaking practices, communities, and monuments.
What does it take for a woman to don the mantle of genius — a title long reserved for male artists? From her studies in Montreal to a dead-end job in Berlin, a midnight tour of Paris, a bankrupt art residency on the Toronto Islands, and a mysterious sculpture garden in the Karoo desert, South African–Canadian author and professor Kasia Van Schaik considers what it means for a young woman to call herself an artist and claim a creative life.
Drawing on a diverse web of literary and cultural sources and artistic icons — from Georgia O'Keeffe to Ana Mendieta, Gertrude Stein to Jamaica Kincaid, Leslie Marmon Silko to Bernadette Mayer — Women Among Monuments asks, What, beyond a room of one's own, are the necessary conditions for female genius? Where does the inner flint of artistic permission come from? What is the oxygen that keeps it burning?
In her memoir interwoven with incisive biographies of female solitude, constraint, and perseverance, Van Schaik blazes a trail for more inclusive artmaking practices, communities, and monuments.
Price: $19.99
Pages: 272
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Imprint: Dundurn Press
Publication Date:
17 March 2026
Trim Size: 8.50 X 5.50 in
ISBN: 9781459752627
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
LITERARY CRITICISM / Feminist, Feminism and feminist theory, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs, LITERARY CRITICISM / Subjects & Themes / Women, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Feminism & Feminist Theory, ART / Criticism & Theory
Kasia Van Schaik is a brilliant tour guide through the landscape of female artistic—dare I say—genius. My copy of Women Among Monuments is heavy with marginalia—an underlined, starred, and hearted journey through the lives and works of inspiring female artists, including the author herself, and their audacity to harness the terror, joy, and sacrifices of artistic creation, to build a room of their own, and to progress from being gazed upon to being seen.
Well-researched, elegantly written, and a genuine pleasure to read, Women Among Monuments offers a thought-provoking exploration of the obstacles, sacrifices, and accidental subversiveness of choosing a creative life. Kasia Van Schaik skillfully draws us into a rich lineage of women who have dedicated themselves to art before or alongside other responsibilities. As someone who has meticulously protected my own pockets of chosen solitude, I felt seen by this book. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
A monument to the vitality of a life lived with and in the company of other women writers and artists.
Well-researched, elegantly written, and a genuine pleasure to read, Women Among Monuments offers a thought-provoking exploration of the obstacles, sacrifices, and accidental subversiveness of choosing a creative life. Kasia Van Schaik skillfully draws us into a rich lineage of women who have dedicated themselves to art before or alongside other responsibilities. As someone who has meticulously protected my own pockets of chosen solitude, I felt seen by this book. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
A monument to the vitality of a life lived with and in the company of other women writers and artists.
Kasia Van Schaik is the author of the linked story collection We Have Never Lived On Earth, which was longlisted for the Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Concordia First Book Prize and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature, the LA Review of Books, the Best Canadian Poetry, and the CBC. Kasia holds a PhD in English Literature from McGill University. She lives in Fredericton, where she teaches English and creative writing at the University of New Brunswick.
- Preface: First Woman PhD
- Arrival
- Next Picasso
- Art Monsters In Paris
- Almost Genius
- Allegorical Women
- The Uncreative Life
- Everyday Monuments
- Books We Sleep With
- This is My World
- A Record of Girlhood
- The Artist's City
- Postscript