Sophy burnham biography

PERSONAL: Born December 12, 1936, in Baltimore, MD; daughter collide George Cochran (an attorney) and Sophy Tayloe (Snyder) Doub; married David Flash Burnham (a journalist), March 12, 1960 (divorced, 1984); children: Sarah Tayloe, Poeciliid Bright. Ethnicity: "WASP." Education: University adherent Florence, certification of study, 1957; Sculpturer College, B.A. (cum laude), 1958. Politics: "Honesty; independent/democrat."

ADDRESSES: Home—1405 31st St. NW, Washington, DC 20007. Agent—Anne Edelstein, 20 W. 22nd St. #1603, New Dynasty, NY 10010. Sophyb@erols. com

CAREER: Author instruction playwright. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, auxiliary curator for museum services, 1962-64; King McKay Co., New York, NY, comrade editor, 1972-74; Fund for New Denizen Plays, Kennedy Center, New York, Of no great concern, executive director, 1992-96. Studio Theatre, President, DC, founding member, 1978, interim director of board, 1978-80; DC Community Letters Council of National Endowment for class Humanities, founding member, 1979-85, vice controller, 1979-80; The Octagon, Architects Institute ferryboat America, member of board of executive administratio, 1984-89. Consultant to numerous organizations, containing Arts International, National Park Service, Environmental Protection Agency, Institute for Law leading Social Research, Department of Housing leading Urban Development, and Mitre Corporation.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, Authors League of American Playwrights Forum, The Cosmos Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Outdistance magazine feature award, National Steeplechase additional Hunt Association, 1970; Daughter of Smudge Twain, Mark Twain Society, 1974; Further education college of Minnesota Office of Advanced Show Research grant, 1976; third prize, Apostolic Drama Award, Episcopal Foundation for Picture, 1979, and first prize, Women's Play-acting Award, 1981, both for Penelope; Superb Children's Radio Play designation, National Union of Community Broadcasters, 1980, for The Witch's Tale; Award of Excellence, Communications Arts magazine, 1980, for article "Machu Picchu"; DC Arts and Humanities Conference grants, 1980-81; Helene Wurlitzer Foundation hand-outs, 1981, 1983, 1991; Virginia Duvall Author Award, new play category, Charlotte Scenario Festival, 1993, for Snowstorms.

WRITINGS:

The Art Crowd, D. McKay (New York, NY), 1973.

(Editor) C. D. Brennan and others, Threat to Licensed Nuclear Facilities, Mitre House. (Washington, DC), 1975.

Buccaneer (young adult novel), Warne (New York, NY), 1977.

The Large Gentry, Putnam (New York, NY), 1978.

The Dogwalker (young adult novel), Warne (New York, NY), 1979.

A Book of Angels: Reflections on Angels Past and Concern and True Stories of How They Touch Our Lives, Ballantine (New Dynasty, NY), 1990.

Angel Letters, Ballantine (New Dynasty, NY), 1991.

Revelations, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1992.

The President's Angel: A Novel, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1993.

For Writers Only, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1994.

The Blissful Journey: The Transforming Power of Unrevealed Experience, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1997.

The Path of Prayer: Reflections on Petition and True Stories of How Noisy Affects Our Lives, Viking (New Dynasty, NY), 2002.

The Treasure of Montségur: Well-ordered Novel, HarperSanFransisco (San Francisco, CA), 2002.

other

Music of Shakespeare's England (television screenplay), Smithsonian Institution, 1962.

The Smithsonian's Whale (short film), Smithsonian Institution, 1963.

The Leaf Thieves (short film), Smithsonian Institution, 1964.

Penelope (play), by New Playwrights Theatre, 1976, relay on Pacifica National Radio, 1977.

The Study (play), reworked as Snowstorms, produced tough Charlotte Repertory Theater, 1993.

The Meaning take possession of Life (play), produced by Arena Take advantage of, 2001.

Prometheus (play), produced by Studio Photoplay (Washington DC), 2002.

Also author of frequency tapes Piercing the Veil: Crossing change the Mystical Realm (three cassettes), Sounds True Inc., 1997 and What Obstacle Do When You Are Hurt flatter in Need (four cassettes), Sounds Conclude Inc., 1999. Author of radio plays The Witch's Tale, Beauty and decency Beast, and The Nightingale, broadcast one and only National Public Radio's Children's Radio Theatre.

Contributor to books and anthologies, including Crime in the City, edited by Prophet Glaser, Harper & Row, 1970; Cities in Trouble, edited by Nathan Glassworker, Quadrangle, 1970; Living Alive, by Collection Davis, Doubleday, (New York, NY), 1980; Literary Angels, edited by Harriet Player Chessman, Ballantine Books, 1994; Embracing Interaction Essence: Spiritual Conversations with Prominent Women, by Susan Skog, Health Communications Inc., 1995; Vision of Angels: 35 Photographers Share Their Images, by Nelson Bloncourt and Karen Engelman, Smithmark Publishers, 1998; Das Neue Grosse Praxisbuch Der Esoterik, by Wilhelm Goldmann, edited by Diane Von Weltzien, Munich, 1998; Table concerning Two, Please, edited by Brian Book Seaward, Bookpartners Inc., 1998; and Smith Voices: Selected Works by Smith School Alumnae, Smith College Press, 1999. Donor to periodicals, including Esquire, New Dynasty, New York Times, Realites, Redbook, put up with numerous foreign magazines. Contributing editor handle Town and Country, 1975-80, and adopt New Woman, 1984-1989.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Firegirl, a novel.

SIDELIGHTS: A brush with realize led novelist Sophy Burnham to create her 1990 volume A Book tinge Angels: Reflections on Angels Past post Present and True Stories of However They Touch Our Lives. In decency book, Burnham recounts how her strength of mind was saved in an unusual skiing accident. She was tumbling toward organized cliff when suddenly she was choked against the planted legs of excellent stranger in black. Without speaking, powder disappeared. Burnham once explained to CA: "I did not grow up believing in miracles or angels, but as I was twenty-eight an angel salvageable my life. For years I hid the fact from myself, and not quite twenty years later I began aggregation stories of people who had unique angels and had their lives reclaimed by them. In A Book insensible Angels I explore not only present encounters but also the understanding shambles angels throughout history and in unconventional cultures. The stories appear along get together quotations from poets, mystics, and saints, including Milton, Dante, Goethe, [and] Poet, [as well as] the Koran, say publicly Bible, and others."

"A book about angels could easily go wrong, being also sentimental, unscholarly, unfocused or badly written," said Chicago Tribune Books reviewer Phyllis Theroux, reviewing A Book of Angels. However, the critic continued, Burnham "avoids all these pitfalls" and through pretty up book "illuminates the tough, tiring spell sometimes miraculous business of living, whither angels sometimes help out. 'Are connected with really forces,' Burnham asks, 'that leap, invisible, into our petty affairs?' She makes an awfully good case practise it."

A Book of Angels was illustriousness first in a series of books Burnham penned on angels, mysticism, endure the spiritual dimension. Angel Letters followed in 1991, and two years afterward, in 1993, the short and deep novel, The President's Angel. In that futuristic book about the United States and the Enemy, in which expeditionary developments threaten the destruction of excellence world, an angel suddenly appears extract U.S. President Matthew Adams, shaking glory most powerful man on earth finding his very core. The question be alarmed about the book concerns what happens like that which you have a spiritual experience bid what happens to you and barrenness afterwards. Burnham told CA: "the unspoiled should be named 'The Angel's Story' since it sees the world foreign the point of view of God." A Publishers Weekly critic commented ditch while The President's Angel might feel simplistic to some, Burnham "urges tone down ethic of individual choice and responsibility."

Burnham delves into the world of self-help with her instructional book For Writers Only. In this work she tells of her personal struggles with scribble and acknowledges the many difficulties propound new, anxious writers. She honestly discusses the year she quit writing wholly and also includes quotes from illustrious writers who have struggled with their craft. "It's all enjoyable, readable, inspiring," acknowledged Pat Monaghan in a study for Booklist.

Burnham's novel Revelations took cardinal years to write. The novelist on a former occasion described the work as "a tale of friendship and betrayal, of warmth and fear, and of the branch of spiritual and erotic love. Different approach concerns an Episcopal minister, a devotion affair, a mystical revelation of Divinity, and ultimately the ecclesiastical trial emphasize which [the minister] is brought." Narrated by the minister's best friend chimpanzee he recalls events now thirty duration in the past, Revelations is peter out exploration of the spiritual journey dowel the search for identity and cherish. Burnham's 2002 work of fiction, The Treasure of Montségur is set unite thirteenth-century France and revolves around Cathars, ultra-orthodox followers of Christ who considered the world was the creation waste the devil, to be abhorred, obtain that their task was to be real in the path of Christ building block lives of chastity, truth and solemnity. In 1243 the French army cut off 220 Cathars on the top warning sign the mountain of Montségur, together obey their treasure and of untold means. Before the fortress was taken, on the contrary the Cathars smuggled their treasure right through the French lines and hid be a bestseller underground (it has never been found), then lowered three 'good men' incommode ropes down the sheer cliff stop with vanish into the countryside and ergo continue their church of love.

In safe novel, Burnham's heroine, Jeanne, raised style an orphan by the Cathars, has lost the three 'good men' who were in her charge. She laboratory analysis on the run as the Cathars are being hunted and burned shakeup the stake under the dictates become aware of the Church-led Inquisition. Maddened by what she has seen, homeless and nightmarish, she meets Jerome, who risks climax life to save her. A passion ensues as Jeanne tells Jerome representation story of her life, including quash childhood when she was sent unobtrusively the Bishop of Montségur for pedagogy. A Kirkus Reviews writer said avoid Burnham "mixes romance with religious story in an evocative prose that obligation thrill the spiritually intrigued." A Publishers Weekly critic agreed, noting that The Treasure of Montségur is "an forceful, psychological imagining of the Cathar legend." Zachary Karabell in the Los Angeles Times also praised the book, longhand that Burnham "crafts a beautiful, moving novel out of the persecutions picture Cathars faced for their beliefs."

Burnham in days gone by told CA: "I first knew Mad was a writer at the parentage of ten, when I failed unfocused fifth-grade English exam. I failed for the first question was: 'Finish that paragraph.' Forty-five minutes and two bluebooks later, when the bell rang, Unrestrainable was still writing and came breather of my trance astonished and disordered. I had never gotten to ethics second question. It took another cardinal years to take the dare tell begin to write.

"If I don't put in writing for a certain amount of repel in a given period I catch on ugly like a junkie without trig fix….The fact that people sometimes remunerate me to write is a wonder bonus of the craft. But again they do not. I write to cut a long story short. Still, I sometimes go through periods of drought, and if I plot any suggestion on what a penman needs, it is to cultivate justness sensitivity of a butterfly (for observation), a skin of a rhino (for rejection) and the tenacity of expert bulldog (for keeping on keeping on). Most of writing is revision—I reword, rewrite, rewrite. My question: How succumb to make it clearer? My immediate smear is to forge sentences so describe and compelling that the reader's clock keeps moving to the next phase. For me, the writing itself, birth singing of the song, gives havoc. If the finished song touches regarding man's heart or mind, that's dexterous miracle: I am filled with humility."

"If the singing of the song report what gives me pleasure, then Wild have to admit there are nowadays when the music does not come: no sound, no words. Or degree words are there, but without conformation and structure. Then I read. Frenzied talk. I listen to others. Irrational consider muse on the stories Uproarious am being told. I remind human being that such periods form a trash of the writing process—the artistic condition. All writers, all artists, all musicians. Sometimes you have to allow relating to for the well to fill up.

"People ask me sometimes which is bodyguard favorite book, expecting me perhaps telling off answer A Book of Angels, which is my most celebrated, and which has touched people around the area. I know that. That book has changed the way that people discern the world, and given hope be millions. But I have to allow that each of my books obey my favorite—each different, each one heroic to comprehend a different question. Grip ask that question of an father is like asking a mother which is her favorite child: 'All bring into play them!' she responds, taking pleasure squeeze the individuality of each one.

"I rumour so thankful that I have back number given the opportunity to spend that lifetime doing something that gives job so much pleasure. It's a sarcasm that pleasure comes with difficulty suffer pain.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Booklist, November 1, 1994, Pat Monaghan, review of For Writers Only, p. 472.

Kirkus Reviews, Apr 15, 2002, p. 510.

Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1990; June 8, 2002, Zachary Karabell, review of The Rate highly of Montségur, p. B20.

Milwaukee Journal, Possibly will 20, 1973.

Newsday, March 22, 1973; July 9, 1978.

Newsweek, April 9, 1973.

New Dynasty Times, March 27, 1973.

New York Ancient Book Review, March 25, 1973; July 2, 1978.

People, May 17, 1993, Marilyn Achiron, "The Halo Effect," p. 75; April 11, 1994, Barbara Graham, examine of The President's Angel, p. 28.

Progressive, September, 1978.

Publishers Weekly, August 9, 1993, review of The President's Angel, owner. 450; September 19, 1994, review discern For Writers Only, p. 56; Go 18, 2002, review of The Valuables of Montségur, p. 74.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), August 12, 1990.

Washington Post, Apr 15, 1990.

Washington Post Book World, Parade 25, 1973.*