Larsen, Deborah

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Larsen, Deborah

(M. Deborah Larsen Cowan)

PERSONAL: Born in St. Paul, MN. Religion: Roman Catholic.

ADDRESSES: Home—Gettysburg, PA. Office—Department of English, Breidenbaugh Hall, Campus Box 0397, 300 N. Washington St., Gettysburg, PA 17325. E-mail—mdcowan@gettysburg.edu.

CAREER: Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA, associate professor of English and M.S. Boyer chair in poetry.

WRITINGS:

Stitching Porcelain: After Mateo Ricci in Sixteenth-Century China (poetry), New Directions (New York, NY), 1991.

The White (novel), Knopf, (New York, NY), 2002.

The Tulip and the Pope: A Nun's Story (memoir), Knopf (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including New Yorker.

SIDELIGHTS: Deborah Larsen's books include Stitching Porcelain: After Mateo Ricci in Sixteenth-Century China, a volume of poetry; The Tulip and the Pope: A Nun's Story, a personal memoir; and The White, a novel based on the true story of a young white woman who was captured by Indians and chose to remain a part of their culture even when she had chances to leave it.

Larsen, who serves as a professor of writing and poetry at Gettysburg College, won praise for her poetry collection Stitching Porcelain. This series of poems is based on the life of Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit who lived in China from 1583 until he died in 1610. While the poetry in this volume is inspired by Ricci's work and the work of other writers, it nevertheless has "an undeniable originality," noted Jessica Greenbaum in a Nation review. Praising the author's skill, she further stated: "It is a rare volume that can make someone else's life feel heartfelt and necessary, but this is the magnificent balance offered by Deborah Larsen's first collection."

Larsen drew from another real life story for her novel The White, published in 2003. The central character is Mary Jemison, who in 1758 was captured by members of the Shawnee tribe. Her family, also captured, was scalped before her eyes, but her life was spared because she bore a resemblance to a young Shawnee who had been killed, and whose family wanted to adopt her. The White, recreates Jemison's descent into emotional numbness and the gradual reawakening of her soul into a completely different type of life. Reviewing the book for Kliatt, Nola Theiss noted that the style is full of abrupt transitions, just as Jemison's life was. By recreating the captive's thoughts, the book is a reading experience that is, like the life that inspired it, "sometimes confusing and disorienting," according to Theiss. Library Journal reviewer Starr E. Smith praised the author for writing in "elegant, poetic language that evokes time, place, and character with feeling and conviction," and a Publishers Weekly reviewer stated: "Larsen's lyricism and imagery are haunting, and her poet's sensibility is omnipresent."

The story of Larsen's own early life is recounted in her memoir The Tulip and the Pope. The author spent some time in a Roman Catholic convent as a young woman, and although she ultimately decided against taking her vows, her description of her time with the sisters in the Iowa convent "is loving and respectful," stated a Kirkus Reviews writer. A Publishers Weekly writer also recommended The Tulip and the Pope as "affectionate rather than bitter … a richly detailed reminiscence of convent life and a sensitive evocation of a young Catholic woman's coming-of-age."