VIRTUAL: An Evening with Historical Fiction Author Susanne Dunlap, Author of The Portraitist: A Novel of Adelaide Labille-Guiard

On Tuesday, January 24 at 7 p.m. the Hudson Library & Historical Society will host a live, virtual streaming event with historical fiction author, Susanne Dunlap, who will discuss her newest book, The Portraitist: A Novel of Adelaide Labille-Guiard. Following the rise of this gifted painter, The Portraitist details Adelaide Labille-Guiard’s fight to take her rightful place in the competitive art world of eighteenth-century Paris. Kirkus Reviews opines, “An imaginative work that brings the story of a little-known artist to vivid life.”

Competing with a rival who’s better connected and better trained than she is, Adelaide faces an uphill battle. Her love affair with her oil painting instructor gives rise to suspicions that he touches up her work, and her decision to make much-needed money by executing erotic pastels threatens to create as many problems as it solves. Meanwhile, her rival goes from strength to strength, becoming Marie Antoinette’s official portraitist and gaining entrance to the elite Académie Royale at the same time as Adelaide. When she finally earns her own royal appointment and receives a massive commission from a member of the royal family, the timing couldn’t be worse: it’s 1789, and with the fall of the Bastille her world is turned upside down by political chaos and revolution. With danger around every corner in her beloved Paris, she must find a way to adjust to the new order, attempting to create a life and a career all over again, all while working to stay alive in the process.

Susanne Dunlap is the author of twelve works of historical fiction for adults and teens, as well as an Author Accelerator Certified Book Coach. Her novel, The Paris Affair, won first place in its category in the CIBA Dante Rossetti awards for Young Adult Fiction and The Musician’s Daughter was a Junior Library Guild Selection, a Bank Street Children’s Book of the Year, and was nominated for the Utah Book Award and the Missouri Gateway Reader’s Prize.

Registration for this program is required and a valid email address is required at the time of registration. Participants will receive an email invitation to attend the program, hosted on Zoom, a day before the program begins.

If you have any questions, please email askus@hudson.lib.oh.us or call (330) 653-6658 x1010.