Writer, arts patron and collector, born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, she studied medicine, and in 1904 went to Paris, where she became acquainted with Matisse, Juan Gris and Picasso, whoose works she collected.

Avant-garde eccentric, and self-styled genius, her Paris home was a salon for the leading artists and writers of the period between World Wars I and II.

In her work she influenced writers such as Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald by her cinematic technique, use of repetition and absence of puntuation; devices to convey immediacy and realism.

She lived with Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967), writer, for 39 years.

"Kiss my lips. She did.
Kiss my lips; again she did.
Kiss my lips over and over and over; again she did. . .
I'll let you kiss me sticky. . . . "

Source: E NOTE

Books: Three Lives (1909) Tender Buttons (1914) Geography and Plays (1922) The Making of Americans (1925) Composition as Explanation (1926) Lucy Church Amiably (1930) How to Write (1931) A Long Gay Book (1932) The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933) Portraits and Prayers (1934) Narration (1935) Lectures in America (1936)

The Geographical History of America (1936) Everybody's Autobiography (1937) Picasso (1938) The World Is Round (1939) Ida (1941) Wars I Have Seen (1945) Yes Is for a Very Young Man (1946) Brewsie and Willie (1946) Opera: Four Saints in Three Acts (1934, music by Virgil Thompson)