Henry Holt may refer to:

• Henry Holt (North Dakota politician) (died 1944), lieutenant governor
• Henry Holt (publisher) (1840–1926), publisher and author from Baltimore, Maryland
  • Henry Holt and Company, Holt's publishing company
• Henry E. Holt (born 1929), astronomer
• Henry H. Holt (1831–1898), Michigan politician, lieutenant governor
• Henry W. Holt (1864–1947), Chief Justice of the Virginia Supreme Court

See also[link]

• Harry Holt (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Eve Ensler
Ensler in March 2011
Born	(1953-05-25) May 25, 1953 (age 59) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Playwright, writer, performer, activist

Eve Ensler (born May 25, 1953) is an American playwright, performer, feminist and activist, best known for her play The Vagina Monologues.^[1][2]

Personal life[link]

Ensler was born in New York, the daughter of a housewife and an executive.^[3] Her father was Jewish and her mother was from a Christian background.^[4] She reports having been physically and sexually abused by her father when she was a child.^[4][5] She graduated from Middlebury College in 1975. She married Richard McDermott in 1978, and divorced him 10 years later. She is the adoptive mother of actor Dylan McDermott, whom she adopted when he was 15 and she was 23.^[6]

Ensler wrote an article in The Guardian (June 12, 2010) in which she mentioned that she is receiving treatment for uterine cancer.^[7]

[edit] The Vagina Monologues

The Vagina Monologues was written in 1996. First performed in the basement of the Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village, The Vagina Monologues has been translated into 48 languages and performed in over 140 countries. Celebrities who have starred in the play include: Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Idina Menzel, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Marin Mazzie, Cyndi Lauper, Mary Testa and Oprah Winfrey. Ensler was awarded the Obie Award in 1996 for ‘Best New Play’ and in 1999 was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Playwriting. She has also received the Berrilla-Kerr Award for Playwriting, the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, and the Jury Award for Theater at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival.^[8]

Recent works[link]

Ensler in June 2010

Ensler has been involved in several films, including V-Day's Until The Violence Stops and the PBS documentary What I Want My Words To Do To You, and has appeared on television on Real Time with Bill Maher (August 26, 2005) and Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry (August 12, 2005).

From October 2005 to April 2006, Ensler toured twenty North American cities with her play The Good Body, following engagements on Broadway, at ACT in San Francisco, and in a workshop production at Seattle Repertory Theatre. The Good Body addresses why women of many cultures and backgrounds perceive pressure to change the way they look in order to be accepted in the eyes of society.

Ensler's play, The Treatment debuted on September 12, 2006, at the Culture Project in New York City. This play explores the moral and psychological trauma that are the result of participation in military conflicts. It stars her adoptive son, Dylan McDermott.

In 2006, Eve released her first major work written exclusively for the printed page. Insecure At Last: Losing It In Our Security-Obsessed World (Villard; Hardcover; October 3, 2006). In Insecure At Last, Ensler explores how people live today, the measures people take to keep themselves safe, and how people can experience freedom by letting go of the deceptive notion of "protection." In 2006 Eve also co-edited A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and A Prayer, an anthology of writings about violence against women.

Eve's newest work, I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around The World, a collection of original monologues about and for girls that aims inspire girls to take agency over their minds, bodies, hearts and curiosities, was released February 2010 in book form by Random House and made The New York Times Best Seller list. The book was workshopped in July 2010 at New York Stage and Film and Vassar College, moving towards an Off-Broadway production. The theatrical production of the piece, titled Emotional Creature, will have its United States debut at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in Berkeley, CA in June 2012. In February 2012, The South African production of Emotional Creature was nominated for a 2011 Naledi Theatre Award for Best Ensemble Production/Cutting Edge Production.

Activism[link]

Ensler is a prominent activist addressing issues of violence against women and girls. In 1998, her experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global activist movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day raises funds and awareness through annual benefit productions of The Vagina Monologues. In 2010, more than 5,400 V-Day events took place in over 1,500 locations in the U.S. and around the world. To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $80 million and educated millions about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it, crafted international educational, media and PSA campaigns, launched the Karama program in the Middle East, reopened shelters, and funded over 12,000 community-based anti-violence programs and safe houses in Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq. These safe houses provide women sanctuary from abuse, female genital mutilation and honor killing.^[9] The 'V' in V-Day stands for Victory, Valentine and Vagina.

In February 2004, Ensler, alongside Sally Field, Jane Fonda and Christine Lahti, protested to have the Mexican government re-investigate the slayings of hundreds of women in Ciudad Juárez, a city along the Texas border.

Ensler is a very close supporter of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) and went to Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban. She supports Afghan women and has organized many programs for them. She organized one event named the "Afghani Women's Summit For Democracy".

Ensler has led a writing group since 1998 at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, which was portrayed in What I Want My Words To Do To You.^[10] Judy Clark, Kathy Boudin, and Pamela Smart were among the writing group's participants featured in the film.

In 2011, V-Day and the Fondation Panzi (DRC), with support from UNICEF, opened the City of Joy, a new community for women survivors of gender violence in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). City of Joy will provide up to 180 Congolese women a year with an opportunity to benefit from group therapy; self-defense training; comprehensive sexuality education (covering HIV/AIDS, family planning); economic empowerment; storytelling; dance; theater; ecology and horticulture. Created from their vision, Congolese women run, operate and direct City of Joy themselves. The City of Joy celebrated its first graduating class in February 2012.

Awards and honors[link]

She has received numerous awards for her artistic and anti-violence work.

Awards and Honors (Select):

• Obie Award for THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES, 1997
• Guggenheim Fellowship Award in Playwriting, 1999
• Berrilla-Kerr Award for Playwriting, 2000
• Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Solo Performance, 2001
• Amnesty International Media Spotlight Award for Leadership, 2002
• The Matrix Award, 2002
• Jury Award for Theater at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, 2002
• Lion of Judah by the United Jewish Communities, 2002.^[11][12]
• Sundance Film Festival’s" Freedom Of Expression" award for WHAT I WANT MY WORDS TO DO TO YOU, 2003
• Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from her alma mater, Middlebury College, 2003
• NETC Theatre Award, a regional Boston theatre award, 2004
• NOW Award from the Intrepid Award Gala, 2004
• The Civil Revolutionary Award from Miami Dade College, 2004
• Award for International Peace Efforts from Cardozo Law School, 2004
• The Avon Award, 2005
• The Sandra Day O’Connor Award from The Arizona Foundation for Women in Phoenix, 2005
• Honorary Doctor of Human Letters from Manhattanville College, 2005
• Honorary Doctor of Communications from Simmons College, 2006
• City of New York Proclamation in honor of founding and her work for V-Day, 2006
• OK2BU Humanitarian Award In recognition of outstanding contributions to the LGBT community, 2006

• Ms. Ensler has also been honored for her effort to end violence against women and girls by such organizations as Planned Parenthood (2004, 2006), The Women’s Prison Association (2004), Sahkti (2004), and several LGBT centers (2004,2006).

• In 2011, Eve Ensler was awarded the Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award, which recognizes an individual from the theater community who has made a substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of humanitarian, social service, or charitable organizations. ^[13].

Criticism[link]

The Vagina Monologues includes a section entitled "The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could". This portion of the play, as originally performed, has been criticized for including a scene where a 13-year-old girl is given a drink by a 24-year-old woman who then has sex with her.^[14] At the conclusion of the segment, the narrator (the grown-up thirteen year old girl) fondly reminisces about the event, claiming that it helped to nurture her and help her grow as a woman, and included the line, "If it was rape, it was good rape".

The segment received criticism not only for depicting the event as a "good rape", but also for forming a double standard, as elsewhere in the play, male-on-female rape is depicted as not only inexcusable but the ultimate act of violence against women. The scene was modified in later performances; the young girl's age was changed to 16, and the "good rape" line was omitted.

Feminist Camille Paglia criticised Ensler's "obsession with male evil", suggesting that this combined with her "claimed history of physical abuse and mental breakdowns" made her "the new Andrea Dworkin".^[15] Bernard Goldberg listed Ensler at #96 in his 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (And Al Franken Is #37).^[16]

Selected works[link]

Plays

• Conviction
• Lemonade
• The Depot
• Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man
• Extraordinary Measures
• The Vagina Monologues
• The Good Body
• Necessary Targets
• The Treatment

Books

• I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World
• Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security Obsessed World
• The Good Body
• Necessary Targets
• Vagina Warriors
• A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer

Films

• Until the Violence Stops (2004)
• What I Want My Words to Do to You: Voices From Inside a Women's Maximum Security Prison (2003)
• The Vagina Monologues (2002)
• Fear No More: Stop Violence Against Women (2002) - interviewee

References[link]

External links[link]

• Eve Ensler biography
• Eve Ensler at the Internet Movie Database
• Eve Ensler's Speech on October 7, 2006 in Los Angeles (Audio)
• Eve Ensler: "Afghanistan is everywhere"
• Pamela Grossman (April 19, 2000). "Down the Vagina Trail" Salon.com
• TED Talks: Eve Ensler on happiness in body and soul at TED in 2004 (excerpt from her play "The Vagina Monologues.")
• TED Talks: Eve Ensler on security at TED
• TED Talks: Eve Ensler: suddenly, my body at TED in 2010.
• Eve Ensler - Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org, October 2006
• TIME magazine: "The Vagina Dialogue" Eve Ensler Q&A
• Mother Jones: Eve Ensler on "good" bodies and bad politics
• Eve Ensler talks about her latest book Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security-Obsessed World October 10, 2006 (video)
• An article written by Ensler about Dr. Denis Mukwege Glamour magazine, September 2007
• "Eve Ensler". Democracy Now!. http://www.democracynow.org/tags/eve_ensler. Retrieved 2010-08-27. 
• The Vagina Monologues Turns Ten, The Times, April 15, 2008
• Victory Over Violence - For Women and Men - Alternet April 25, 2008
• V To The 10th! - Fundraising Success - January, 01, 2008
• Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin - September 8, 2008
• Ensler, Eve (October 11, 2006). Interview with Tavis Smiley. The Tavis Smiley Show. KCET. Los Angeles. http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200610/20061011_ensler.html. Retrieved 2010-09-02. 
• Ensler, Eve (February 12, 2010). Interview with Tavis Smiley. The Tavis Smiley Show. KCET. Los Angeles. http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/201002/20100212_ensler.html. Retrieved 2010-09-02. 
• Eve Ensler Marks Fifth Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with New Play - video report by Democracy Now!
• Eve Ensler on Twitter

Hilary Mary Mantel CBE (/mænˈtɛl/ man-TEL;^[1] born 6 July 1952), née Thompson, is an English novelist, short story writer and critic. Her work, ranging in subject from personal memoir to historical fiction, has been short-listed for major literary awards.^[2] In 2009, she won the Man Booker Prize for her novel Wolf Hall.^[3]

Early life[link]

She was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, the eldest of three children, and was brought up in the Derbyshire mill village of Hadfield, attending the local Roman Catholic primary school. Her parents, Margaret and Henry Thompson, were both born in England, of Irish descent. Her parents separated and she did not see her father after age eleven. Jack Mantel moved in and became her unofficial stepfather^[4] and she took his surname. Her family background, the mainspring of much of her fiction, is explained in her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. She lost her religious faith at age 12 and says that this left a permanent mark on her: the "real cliche, the sense of guilt. You grow up believing that you're wrong and bad. And for me, because I took what I was told really seriously, it bred a very intense habit of introspection and self-examination and a terrible severity with myself. So that nothing was ever good enough. It's like installing a policeman, and one moreover who keeps changing the law."^[5]

Mantel attended Harrytown Convent in Romiley, Cheshire (now Romiley, Greater Manchester). In 1970 she began her studies at the London School of Economics to read law.^[2] She transferred to the University of Sheffield and graduated as Bachelor of Jurisprudence in 1973.

Career and health[link]

After university, Mantel worked in the social work department of a geriatric hospital, and then as a sales assistant in a department store. In 1974 she began writing a novel about the French Revolution, which was later published as A Place of Greater Safety.

In 1977 Mantel went to live in Botswana with her husband, Gerald McEwen, a geologist, whom she had married in 1972. Later they spent four years in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia – she published a memoir of this time, "Someone to Disturb", in the London Review of Books. Leaving Jeddah gave her the feeling that it was "the best day of my life".^[6] During her twenties, she suffered from a debilitating and painful illness. This was initially diagnosed as a psychiatric illness, for which she was hospitalised and treated with anti-psychotic drugs. These paradoxically produced psychotic symptoms; as a consequence, for some years she refrained from seeking help from doctors. Finally, in Botswana and desperate, she consulted a medical text-book and realised she was probably suffering from a severe form of endometriosis, a diagnosis confirmed by doctors in London. The condition and necessary surgery left her unable to have children and continued to disrupt her life, with continued treatment by steroids causing weight gain and radically changing her appearance. She was patron of the Endometriosis SHE Trust.

Literary career[link]

Her first novel, Every Day is Mother's Day, was published in 1985, and its sequel, Vacant Possession, a year later. Returning to England, she became the film critic of The Spectator and a reviewer for a number of papers and magazines in Britain and the United States.

Her novel Eight Months on Ghazzah Street (1988), which drew on her first-hand experience in Saudi Arabia, uses the dangerous clash of values between the neighbours in a city apartment block to illustrate the tensions between Islam and the liberal West. Her Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize-winning novel Fludd is set in 1956 in a fictitious northern village called Fetherhoughton, and centres on the convent and Roman Catholic church. A mysterious stranger brings about alchemical transformation in the lives of the downtrodden, the depressed and the despised.

A Place of Greater Safety (1992) won the Sunday Express Book of the Year award, for which her two previous books had been shortlisted. A long novel written with a close eye on historical accuracy, it traces the career of three revolutionaries, Danton, Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins, from childhood to their early deaths during the Reign of Terror of 1794.

A Change of Climate (1994), set in rural Norfolk, explores the lives of Ralph and Anna Eldred, raising their four children and devoting their lives to charity. It includes chapters about their early married life as missionaries in South Africa, when they were imprisoned and deported to Bechuanaland, and the tragedy that occurred there.

An Experiment in Love, which won the Hawthornden Prize, takes place over two university terms in 1970, and follows the progress of three girls – two friends and one enemy – as they leave home for university in London. Mrs Thatcher makes a cameo appearance in a novel that explores women’s appetites and ambitions and suggests how they are often thwarted. Though Mantel has used material from her own life, it is not an autobiographical novel.

Her next book, The Giant, O’Brien, is set in the 1780s and is based on the true story of Charles O’Brien or Byrne, who came to London to exhibit himself as a freak. His bones hang today in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. The novel treats O’Brien and his antagonist, the Scots surgeon John Hunter, less as characters in history than as mythic protagonists in a dark and violent fairytale, necessary casualties of the Age of Enlightenment. Mantel adapted the book for BBC Radio 4, in a play starring Lloyd Hutchinson as the Giant, Alex Norton as John Hunter, and Frances Tomelty and Deborah Finley as two of the women who cross their path.^{[citation needed]}

In 2003 Mantel published her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, which won the MIND ‘Book of the Year’ award. That same year she brought out a collection of short stories, Learning To Talk. All the stories deal with childhood and, taken together, the books show how the events of a life are mediated into fiction. Her 2005 novel, Beyond Black, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Set in the years around the millennium, it features a professional medium, Alison Hart, whose calm and jolly exterior conceals grotesque psychic damage. She trails around with her a troupe of ‘fiends’ who are invisible but always on the verge of becoming flesh.^{[citation needed]}

Some comparison has been made^[7] between Mantel's work and that of Muriel Spark.

Mantel was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2006 Birthday Honours.

The long novel Wolf Hall, about Henry VIII’s minister Thomas Cromwell, was published in 2009 to high critical acclaim.^[8] The book went on to win that year's Man Booker Prize and upon winning the award, Mantel stated, "I can tell you at this moment I am happily flying through the air".^[9] Judges voted three to two in favour of Wolf Hall for the prize, with Mantel being presented with a trophy and a £50,000 cash prize during an evening ceremony at the London Guildhall.^[10][11] The panel of judges, led by the broadcaster James Naughtie, described Wolf Hall as an "extraordinary piece of storytelling".^[12] Leading up to the award, the book was backed as the favourite by bookmakers and accounted for 45% of all the nominated books' sales.^[10] By winning, it subsequently became the first favourite to win the award since 2002.^[3]

The sequel to Wolf Hall, called Bring Up the Bodies, was published in May 2012 to wide acclaim.^[13] She is now working on the third novel of the Henry VIII trilogy called The Mirror and the Light.^[14]She is also working on a short non-fiction book called The Woman Who Died of Robespierre, about the Polish playwright Stanisława Przybyszewska. Mantel also writes reviews and essays, mainly for The Guardian, the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books.

The Culture Show programme on BBC Two broadcast a profile of Mantel on 17 September 2011.^[15]

Articles[link]

• "What a man this is, with his crowd of women around him!", London Review of Books, 30 March 2000.
• "Some Girls Want Out", London Review of Books, v. 26 no. 5, pg 14-18, 4 March 2004. Describes extreme fasting for religious purposes as "holy anorexia", with a comparison with "secular anorexia", tying the two together as "social hypocrisy".
• "Diary", London Review of Books, 4 November 2010.

Bibliography[link]

• Every Day is Mother's Day: Chatto & Windus, 1985
• Vacant Possession: Chatto & Windus, 1986
• Eight Months on Ghazzah Street: Viking, 1988
• Fludd: Viking, 1989
• A Place of Greater Safety: Viking, 1992
• A Change of Climate: Viking, 1994
• An Experiment in Love: Viking, 1995
• The Giant, O'Brien: Fourth Estate, 1998
• Giving Up the Ghost (A Memoir): Fourth Estate, 2003
• Learning to Talk (Short Stories): Fourth Estate, 2003
• Beyond Black: Fourth Estate, 2005
• Wolf Hall: Fourth Estate, 2009
• Bring Up the Bodies: Henry Holt and Co., First Edition, May 2012
• The Mirror and the Light: in progress

Prizes and awards[link]

• 1987, Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize
• 1990, Southern Arts Literature Prize (Fludd)
• 1990, Cheltenham Prize (Fludd)
• 1990, Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize (Fludd)
• 1992, Sunday Express Book of the Year (A Place of Greater Safety)
• 1996, Hawthornden Prize (An Experiment in Love)
• 2003, MIND Book of the Year (Giving Up the Ghost (A Memoir))
• 2006, Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia Region, Best Book) (shortlist) (Beyond Black)
• 2006, CBE
• 2006, Orange Prize for Fiction (shortlist) (Beyond Black)
• 2009, Man Booker Prize (winner) (Wolf Hall), National Book Critics Circle Award (winner) (Wolf Hall)
• 2010, Orange Prize for Fiction (shortlist) (Wolf Hall)
• 2010, Walter Scott Prize (winner) (Wolf Hall)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Online Wall Street Journal review
• Enhanced Editions iPhone App of Wolf Hall
• Interview with Ramona Koval, The Book Show, ABC Radio National, 21.10.08
• Profile in The New Yorker magazine
• Mantel archive from The New York Review of Books
• Hilary Mantel goes from Booker outsider to favourite in 48 hours
• Cromwell Unshadowed, Razor Sharp, Janet Maslin, The New York Times, 4 October 2009
• Hilary Mantel on Wolf Hall Video
• Articles by Hilary Mantel on her publisher's blog, 5th Estate