Liza Bennett, author of four novels set in the Berkshires, turns to creative nonfiction in Georgia & Anita: The Lifelong Friendship of Georgia O’Keeffe and Anita Pollitzer (University of Nebraska Press, 2025) to tell the fascinating, little-known story of the enduring friendship between America’s first great woman artist and a charismatic leader of the suffragist movement. It was Anita Pollitzer who first showed Georgia O’Keeffe’s work to family friend and mentor Alfred Stieglitz, the world-famous photographer whose 291 gallery in New York City was the epicenter of the modern art world. While O’Keeffe, Stieglitz, and their circle of friends were at the forefront of American modernism, Pollitzer became a leader of the National Woman’s Party and was instrumental in the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

Of local interest, the book explores the many decades that O’Keeffe spent at Stieglitz’s home on Lake George, a period that started with great creative output for the artist and ended in personal turmoil. Based on extensive research, including their fifty-year correspondence, Georgia & Anita casts light on the friendship of these two women who, in different ways, helped to modernize the world and women’s roles in it.

Liza Bennett is a full-time writer and former advertising executive. She has published ten novels, including Local Knowledge, So Near, A Place for Us, and Bleeding Heart under her maiden name Liza Gyllenhaal. Georgia & Anita is her first work of nonfiction. She is the past Board Chair and long-time board member of the Academy of American Poets, currently serving on the Emeritus board, and is the Secretary of the West Stockbridge Historical Society. She divides her time between New York City and the Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts.

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