The Baby on the Fire Escape

By Julie Phillips,

Book cover of The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Baby Problem

Book description

What does it mean to create, not in "a room of one's own" but in a domestic space? Do children and genius rule each other out? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge.

With fierce empathy and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Baby on the Fire Escape as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

At a moment when I was stuck in the long process of writing my book–newly divorced, overwhelmed by solo parenting young twins, and exhausted by pandemic shutdowns–this book reinvigorated me as a writer and mother. Phillips artfully demonstrates not only that motherhood and creative lives aren’t mutually exclusive, as the common trope would suggest, but that there are infinite paths to combining the two. 

From Sara's list on the stories we tell about women.

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