University of Arkansas Press Memoir Delves Into What It’s Like to Be a Nude Art Model

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Kathleen Rooney’s Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object, published by the University of Arkansas Press (cloth, $22.50), is a lively meditation on the profession of nude modeling – that “spine-tingling combination of power and vulnerability, submission and dominance” – as it has been practiced in history and as it is practiced today.

Rooney draws on her own experiences working as an artist’s model, as well as on the stories of famous, notorious and mysterious artists and models through the ages. Combining personal perspective, historical anecdote and witty prose, Rooney reveals that both the appeal of posing nude for artists and the appeal of drawing the naked figure lie in our deeply human responses to beauty, sex, love and death.

While finishing up her undergraduate degree in Washington, D.C., Rooney suddenly found herself without her art gallery job, and needing money to finish her schooling. “I responded to an ad in a newspaper – ‘Be a Part of Art’ – calling for nude models at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Georgetown. I called them up and within a few days I was standing in a studio taking my clothes off in front of 20 complete strangers.”

“The relationship between an artist and his or her model is unlike any other relationship I can think of, and at its best it can be intimate and entertaining and satisfying. A bad model can wreck a class or session, whereas a good one can be a kind of partner or at least an encouragement.”

Lia Purpura, author of On Looking, says “if Live Nude Girl caught your eye, promised, beckoned – good. Follow the enticement and you’ll encounter the thrill of a rigorous and questioning mind in motion.”Peter Stitt, editor of The Gettysburg Review, callsRooney’s memoir “surprisingly introspective, learned and thoughtful. … The writing is enticing, engaging, inviting, and the anecdotes it tells are irresistible.” Rachel Kramer Bussel, editor of many popular anthologies and former columnist for The Village Voice says that “Rooney boldly and bravely dissects what it means to disrobe in the name of art – and money. For anyone who wants to know why a woman would prefer to be nude rather than naked (and what the difference is), read Live Nude Girl and find out.”

Kathleen Rooney is the author of Reading with Oprah: The Book Club that Changed America, now in its second edition, published by the University of Arkansas Press, as well as the poetry collections Oneiromance (An Epithalamion), Something Really Wonderful and That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness, the latter two written collaboratively with Elisa Gabbert. She is co-founder of the small literary publisher, Rose Metal Press and her essay “Live Nude Girl” was selected for publication in the distinguished anthology, Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers. She lives in Chicago.

Rooney and short story writer Kyle Minor – his new book is In the Devil’s Territory – will embark on a joint nationwide authors tour, called Live Nude Girl in the Devil’s Territory, that will take them to more than 25 bookstores and venues all over the country. At each stop they are inviting a local author to read with them. Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) has accepted their invitation to read with them in San Francisco. On Feb. 27, Rooney and Minor will be reading at Fayetteville’s Nightbird Books. They will be joined by Miroslav Penkov, an M.F.A. student at the University of Arkansas.