Helen Marie Casey

Helen Marie Casey's newest book is the biography, MY DEAR GIRL: THE ART OF FLORENCE HOSMER (Black Lawrence Press). Miss Hosmer, the focus of the biography, was once one of Boston's more prominent portrait painters. Today she is largely unknown. The book re-introduces this late nineteenth-century figure and her paintings. Helen is also the author of two poetry chapbooks, INCONSIDERATE MADNESS (Black Lawrence Press), a collection of poems about Mary Dyer, hanged in Boston in 1660, which was a finalist for the Boston Authors Club Julia Ward Howe Award, and FRAGRANCE UPON HIS LIPS (Finishing Line Press), a collection of poems about Joan of Arc, whose 600th birthday is being celebrated this year. Her monograph, PORTLAND'S COMPROMISE: THE COLORED SCHOOL 1867-1872, was Helen's first published prose work.