I answer six questions...on writing about Laura Wheeler Waring
- Valerie Harris
- Sep 7
- 4 min read
I've spent much of the past several weeks working on the proposal for my book about Laura Wheeler Waring---the most successful African American female painter of the first half of the 20th century. In putting the proposal together I've been able to clarify that this will be no academic survey of Waring's artistic output. Rather, it is the life story of one strong-minded woman's journey in unwavering pursuit of her calling; a journey upheld by the parallel pillars of family, ambition, society, and legacy. I'll continue to share bits from my ongoing work here on the blog. Meanwhile, here's a recent interview that appeared in the August 2025 edition of The Biographer's Craft.....
Six Questions with Valerie Harris
What is your current project and at what stage is it?
I’m at work on a biography of the mid-twentieth-century African American artist Laura Wheeler Waring (1887-1948), whom I consider a forerunner to the current renaissance in Black figurative art. Waring specialized in portraiture, specifically of middle- and professional-class African Americans—the elite of the race—of which she was a solid member, born and bred. She was prominently featured in the much-acclaimed Harlem Renaissance show at the Metropolitan Museum last year, so her star is rising again. But I’ve been researching Waring since 2011 and writing about her since about 2015. I’ve drafted the first five chapters of the biography and have been presenting on her as both a painter and illustrator for the past four years or so. One bit of advice that resonated with me at this year’s BIO Conference was not to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to perfect my book proposal because an interested agent will want to help shape the proposal into something they believe will sell. I’m ready to start querying.
Who is your favorite biographer or what is your favorite biography?
I’ve always liked biographies of creatives, particularly writers, although I happen to be writing about a visual artist. I’m interested in process, so I’m always curious about how creative people navigate life, sometimes totally reimagining their past and reinventing themselves in order to make time to create. They tend to launch themselves into adventures, to make their lives a work of art. One of my all-time favorites is the late journalist Valerie Boyd’s biography of the writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston [Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neal Hurston, Scribner, 2002]. Boyd spoke at the 2015 BIO Conference and told a story about how she’d visited the office of Robert Hemenway, who’d written a literary biography of Hurston. There were boxes in the corner he said Boyd could take because he hadn’t used that information for his book. But those boxes, Boyd said, contained personal letters and documents that allowed her to write in depth about who Hurston was as a woman, an ambitious Black woman, about her personal relationships, her interactions with her peers—the life beyond the literary. I value my signed copy of that biography. It inspired me.
What have been your most satisfying moments as a biographer?
Being able to authenticate a long-lost painting. One thing about having the blog is that people find you. A reader emailed me about a painting that she’d found while clearing out her late mother’s attic. Her mother had taught at the same HBCU outside Philadelphia where Waring taught for 40 years (I and my two sisters also attended that school); in fact, the mother taught in the very same classroom where Waring had taught. When the mother retired, she took a small watercolor that had hung on the classroom wall, like, forever. The reader sent me images of the painting and of the label on the back. I could tell from my research that it was a Waring piece—I even had the catalog from the 1915 Philadelphia Watercolor Club show where it was listed. I tell that story on my blog.
What have been your most frustrating moments?
Being referred by one Waring family member to another family member who she said had a cache of papers that would be helpful to me. However, that other family member was not interested in speaking with me. That felt like a bummer at the time.
One research/marketing/attitudinal tip to share?
My blog has been incredibly helpful. I don’t have a large audience, but I have an impactful one. I’ve gotten a number of paid engagements thanks to the blog. Just before this year’s BIO Conference I got an email from a retired Registrar at the National Portrait Gallery, which holds several Waring paintings. She told me that some previously restricted papers at the Library of Congress—from the Waring family member who rejected me, interestingly enough—were now accessible and I might want to take a look. So I came down to DC a day early and left a little later in order to spend some time at the LOC. I’m still processing how this new information enhances what I already had. Between the BIO Conference and my LOC research, the trip was incredibly productive. I’m very thankful that the reader enjoyed my blog and reached out to me.
What genre, besides biography, do you read for pleasure and who are some of your favorite writers?
Fiction—classic fiction, and I like some of the historical fiction based on real-life personages. I write fiction. I have a trilogy in the works, actually, inspired by Waring and two of her contemporaries. I’m a stylist, so I tend to read as much for language as for story. If the language doesn’t embrace me, I’m subject to not finish the book. My favorite for several years now has been the English writer Jean Rhys. She wrote with economy but packed a lot of relatability in a few words. I’ve read just about everything of hers: novels, short stories, her unfinished autobiography, her letters. But I didn’t find her biography particularly satisfying. The author, I felt, relied too much on Rhys’s published work in relaying her life story. I learned nothing new from that book. But there are several biographies of Jean Rhys. I just chose the wrong one for my taste.
—
Valerie Harris is a BIO member, writer, and media creator in Philadelphia. Her often-cited article, “Life of a Portrait: Laura Wheeler Waring’s Anna Washington Derry” details the parallel lives of the artist and the sitter for Waring’s most popular painting.
© 2023-2027 Valerie Harris. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Wonderful interview--and such critically important work! I loved this line: "I’m always curious about how creative people navigate life, sometimes totally reimagining their past and reinventing themselves in order to make time to create." Yes!!