Mechanics' Institute events director Laura Sheppard offers her acclaimed 30-minute performance (in period costume) to give voice to Harriet Lane Levy's charming Paris Portraits: Stories of Picasso, Matisse, Gertrude Stein, and Their Circle (Heyday, $21.95).
In 1907, Levy, a celebrated San Francisco writer and theater critic, moved to Paris with her friend Alice B. Toklas and suddenly found herself immersed in a strange and vibrant world. In this book Levy tells of her initiation into the Parisian lifestyle and salons of the Steins, the rivalry between Picasso and Matisse, wild nights in Montmartre, and her own discoveries as a single woman abroad, painting a picture of Paris that is simultaneously grand and intimate.
Harriet Levy was born into a wealthy Jewish family in San Francisco in 1867 and graduated from UC Berkeley. In the 1890s she wrote for The Wave, with Jack London and Frank Norris, followed by time served as the drama critic for the San Francisco Call before she moved to Paris. She died in 1950, having returned to California at the beginning of World War I.
