Description

Liza Wieland’s latest novel imagines what happened to the poet Elizabeth Bishop during three life-changing weeks she spent in Paris in the run-up to World War II. Bishop arrives in France with her Vassar college roommates in June 1937, amidst the looming threats of facism and the burgeoning Occupation. 

Wieland builds her story around the only year that Bishop didn’t keep a detailed journal of her life, and she smartly imagines that year as she weaves it into the larger fabric of Bishop’s yet-to-be-realized career.

One critic: “Poignant and captivating, Liza Wieland’s Paris, 7 A.M. is a beautifully rendered take on the formative years of one of America’s most celebrated—and mythologized—female poets.