Rebecca Solnit papers, 1968-2019

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Summary

Creators:
Solnit, Rebecca
Abstract:
This collection documents the life and work of the American author, Rebecca Solnit, including correspondence, juvenilia and family documents, manuscripts and research files, teaching files, and collected books, magazines, and clippings containing both her work and reviews and interviews relating to her work.
Extent:
43 Linear Feet (79 manuscript boxes, 5 flat boxes, 9 cartons, 2 card boxes) and 0.091 gigabyte(s) 102 3.5" floppy disks; 1 5.25" floppy disk; 1 hard drive; 12 zip disks.
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

[identification of item], Rebecca Solnit papers (M1839). Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, California.

Background

Scope and content:

This collection primarily contains papers related to Rebecca Solnit's writing career - research files, notes, manuscripts, correspondence, reviews of her work, posters and brochures for her talks and lectures, as well as published copies of her articles and books. She also collected various art, activist, and punk magazines.

The personal file includes correspondence with family and friends, family histories, financial and medical records, and childhood writing, drawings, and school files. Juvenilia, personal correspondence, journals, and some other personal records are restricted.

The collection also includes the contents of a hard drive and floppy disks, cassettes and VHS tapes, and some CDs and DVDs, which cover a variety of subjects.

Biographical / historical:

Rebecca Solnit (born 1961) is a San Francisco-based American author, activist, art critic, and curator whose work covers such topics as feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art.

She is the third of four children of Theresa Allen and Albert Solnit, and was raised in Novato, California. She credits her brother David's influence for her involvement in the demonstrations at the Nevada nuclear test site, and later the Western Shoshone Defense Project, the experience of which developed into a significant part of Savage Dreams (1994).

After acquiring her GED, she attended the American University at Paris before eventually receiving an undergraduate degree in English from San Francisco State University in 1981 and a graduate degree in Journalism from UC Berkeley in 1984. She then worked as an editor and writer for ArtWeek,Pacific Sun, and other art publications. She has since authored many more articles for various publications such as Harper's,Orion,Sierra, and The Guardian. Her writing has also been included in artists' books, museum catalogs, and anthologies.

Her first book was Secret Exhibition: Six California Artists of the Cold War Era, published in 1991 and nspired in part by an encounter with the work of the filmmaker and artist, Wallace Berman, while working at the SFMOMA. Since, she has written over twenty-five more on various topics, including River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas; and Men Explain Things to Me. She credits writers such as Pablo Neruda, Virginia Woolf, and Henry David Thoreau as inspirations for her own work.

Rebecca Solnit was an Artist in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in 1989 and has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. River of Shadows won a National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism and a Sally Hacker Prize, while Call Them by Their Names won a Kirkus Prize. In 2019, she won the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in Non-Fiction.

Acquisition information:
Purchase, 2011. Accessions 2011-119, 2020-078.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Collection is open for research except for juvenilia, personal correspondence, journals, and papers of financial, medical, or otherwise sensitive nature, which are indicated in the finding aid. Materials must be requested at least 36 hours in advance of intended use. Born-digital material is closed until processed.

Terms of access:

While Special Collections is the owner of the physical and digital items, permission to examine collection materials is not an authorization to publish. These materials are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. Any transmission or reproduction beyond that allowed by fair use requires permission from the owners of rights, heir(s) or assigns.

Preferred citation:

[identification of item], Rebecca Solnit papers (M1839). Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, California.

Location of this collection:
Department of Special Collections, Green Library
557 Escondido Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-6004, US
Contact:
(650) 725-1022
specialcollections@stanford.edu
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