Torn By Light

Poet and artist Joanne de Longchamps (1923-1983) grew up in Los Angeles and studied art and music in France. She came to Reno in 1941 after marrying mining engineer Galen Edward de Longchamps. She pursued her interests in poetry and art at the University of Nevada, Reno, and began publishing artwork and poems in regional and national magazines and literary journals. Her paintings and collages were exhibited at local and regional shows. She received the Reynolds Lyric Award from the Poetry Society of America in 1954 and the Carolina Quarterly Annual Award from the University of North Carolina in 1959. She was appointed the first Walter Van Tilburg Clark Lecturer in Creative Writing at UNR in 1973 and received the Nevada Governor's Art Award for Literature in 1983. Her later work was influenced by the Second Wave Feminist Movement of the 1970s.