- Solita Solano
Solita Solano, real name "Sarah Wilkinson" (born 1888 in Troy,
New York , died 22 November 1975 in Orgeval nearParis ) was an American writer, poet and journalist.Life
Sarah Wilkinson came from a middle-class family and attended the "Emma Willard Collage" in
New York City . After the death of her father she left home and married her childhood sweetheart Oliver Filley. They spent the next four years in thePhilippines , inChina andJapan , where her husband worked as an engineer. They returned to New York in 1908 where she started work as a theatre critic with theNew York Tribune and as a freelance contributor to theNational Geographic Society . At this time she changed her name to "Solita Solano".In 1919 Solano got to know the journalist
Janet Flanner inGreenwich Village with whom she started a relationship. In 1921 they travelled toGreece , where Janet was to work on a report for the "National Geographic" onConstantinopel . Solano had three books published, and as they were not very successful, returned to journalism. In the following year they travelled toFrance . InParis they joined the intellectuell-lesbian circle ofGertrude Stein ,Alice B. Toklas ,Natalie Clifford Barney ,Romaine Brooks andDjuna Barnes .At this time Janet Flanner started writing, under the
Pseudonym "Genêt", the "Letter from Paris", for the "The New Yorker ". After the outbreak of World War II Solano and Flanner returned to New York.A few years later Solano left Flanner after she started an affair with Natalia Danesi Murray; meanwhile Solano fell in love with Elizabeth Jenks Clark. After the war Solano returned to France, where she died at the age of 87.
References
* Berenice Abbott: "Portrait of Solita Solano", Parasol Press, Ltd. (1981)
* William Patrick Patterson: "Ladies of the Rope: Gurdjieff's Special Left Bank Women's Group", Arete Pubns (1998) ISBN 1-8795-1441-9
* Andrea Weiss: "Paris war eine Frau", Rowohlt (1998) ISBN 3-4992-2257-4
* Gabriele Griffin: "Who's Who in Lesbian and Gay and Writing", Routledge, London (2002)External links
* [http://www.gurdjieff.org/rope.htm Gurdjieff and the Women of The Rope]
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