The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem

By Julie Phillips

Categories: Arts & Photography, Biographies & Memoirs

The Baby on the Fire Escape (2022) is Julie Phillips's group biography of women artists and writers who tried to combine creative work with raising children. Phillips looks at figures including Doris Lessing, Ursula K. Le Guin, Audre Lorde, Alice Neel, Toni Morrison, Angela Carter and Susan Sontag, examining how each handled the competing demands of art and motherhood. The title comes from a story about Alice Neel, and the book questions the idea that the two roles cannot coexist.

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• Ryan Holiday: “The Baby on the Fire Escape, which is about female artists. Also very good.”