Carolyn Burke

Carolyn Burke (born March 29, 1940) is an Australian-born American writer, translator, and author of four biographies.

Burke was born in 1940 to Valda Steigrad Katz and David Morris Katz in Sydney, Australia: she came to the U.S. when her mother remarried Dr. Harold Goldberg.

Burke earned a B.A. with Highest Honors in French Literature at Swarthmore College (1961); a M.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1971), both in English and Comparative Literature, at Columbia University.

In Paris, where she lived and worked for many years, she studied French at the Sorbonne.

Burke taught English literature at several colleges and universities including the University of Paris-IV, the University of Lille (France); the University of California, Santa Cruz and Davis (U.S.); the Universities of Sydney and New South Wales (Australia).

She co-translated two books by the French psychoanalyst and philosopher Luce Irigaray, co-edited a collection of essays about Irigaray, and published more than twenty articles on French feminist theory and modernist women writers in scholarly journals.

At the invitation of poet Kathleen Fraser, Burke served as a contributing editor at How(ever), a journal of innovative writing by contemporary women poets in dialogue with neglected texts by modernist writers, including Gertrude Stein and Mina Loy.

Burke left academia in 1990 to write full time.

Her reviews, essays, and translations have appeared in many periodicals, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Art in America, Art Press, Critical Inquiry, Heat, Sulfur, La Revue des Deux Mondes, La Nouvelle Revue Française, and La Règle du Jeu.

Of Burke's first book, Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy, The Washington Post wrote: “An amazing examination of ‘modern life.’” The New Republic noted, “In this superb biography, the first ever, Carolyn Burke does full justice to the mercurial nature of Loy’s temperament, and offers judicious assessments of her work.” The Atlantic Monthly called the book “as much a history of early-twentieth-century aesthetics as it is a biography of a woman who took part in all the turmoil.” Choice called the book “a jewel of the biographer's art.”

Her first was a life of the English poet Mina Loy, published in 1996 and reprinted in 2021.

She has also written books about the American photographer Lee Miller, the French chanteuse Edith Piaf, and the interwoven lives of four iconic figures of American art, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand, and Rebecca Salsbury.

Burke's next book, Lee Miller: A Life, was nominated for the 2005 Biography Award by the National Book Critics Circle and translated into French.

The New York Sun called the book a “state-of-the-art biography."; The New York Times wrote that it “captures the excitement of Miller’s omnivorous spirit.”; The Daily Telegraph (U.K.) noted, “Lee Miller was an astounding woman, brought memorably to life in this astounding book.”

Burke's third biography, No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf, was praised in The New York Times as “concise and gracefully written”; in Booklist: “a perceptive, supportive, even definitive biography”.

The reviewer for the UK newspaper Daily Express wrote,“This book pays Piaf the supreme compliment of coming from both the heart and head of its author.

You can feel a palpable love for her subject, and there’s also clear-headed analysis of what made Piaf tick.” It has been translated into a number of languages including French.

Burke's next book, Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury was hailed by The Washington Post as “{a} sharp-eyed group portrait of two artistic couples.

. . in astute, lucid prose.” The Wall Street Journal called the book “Fascinating.

. . . compelling.

. . .thoroughly researched and capacious.” The National Book Review observed: “In her deeply researched and richly imagined book, Burke focuses on two marriages in a way that amplifies the personal and artistic lives of a quartet of painters and photographers and magnifies their powerful influence on 20th century art—and on each other.”