Carol Anshaw was born on March 22, 1946, in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.[7] Her mother was Virginia Anshaw Stanley and her father was Henry G. Stanley. During Anshaw's childhood and adolescence, her family lived in Michigan and Florida.[8]
In 1969, she married Charles White. The couple divorced in 1985.[8]
Since 1996 Anshaw has been partners with the documentary maker and photographer, Jessie Ewing. They were married on May 25, 2014.[9] Now, the couple divides their time between Chicago and Amsterdam.[10]
Career
Anshaw has been writing fiction since 1972.[9] Her stories have appeared in Story magazine, Tin House, The Best American Stories and Do Me: Tales of Sex and Love from Tin House.[11]
She has published five novels. Her first, the critically acclaimed Aquamarine (1992) explores one life lived on parallel paths.[12][13]
Perhaps Anshaw's most popular novel,Carry the One (2012), has been highly regarded as a portrait of grief and American culture.[14] The novel received warm endorsements from Emma Donoghue and Alison Bechdel.[15] Set mainly in Chicago, Anshaw deftly takes the narrative's point of view from character to character, showing "how time affects relationships, tipping emotional dominoes one way or another within a family or circle of friends."[12]
Anshaw is also a painter, and is currently working on a sequence of paintings of the English Channel swimmer, Gertrude Ederle. "Walking Through Leaves," her painted biography of the novelist and poet, Vita Sackville-West was put up in November 2013 at Rockford University, Rockford, IL.[16][17][18][19]
Awards
Publishing Triangle named Aquamarine one of "The Triangle's 100 Best" gay and lesbian novels of the 1990s.[1]
