WOMEN ON FIRE

Irene O'Garden

is included with Gloria Steinem, Maya Angelou, Eleanor Roosevelt and other famous writers in the anthology The Greatness of Girls (Andrews McMeel, 2001). Excerpted is a section of her book, Fat Girl, published with her drawings in hardcover by Harper San Francisco. It is the story of her growing up as an overweight child, dealing with a lifetime of food and body image issues, including how they affected her work as a professional actress. It premiered at La Mama in New York City, and O'Garden has performed it across the US and in Canada. Though O'Garden trained and performed as an Equity actress she increasingly focused on writing.

Harper has just released her second children's book, The Scrubbly Bubbly Car Wash (March 2003). They also published Maybe My Baby in 1998 (over 65,000 copies sold). In addition to publishing in national magazines (Woman's Day featured her poetry in a four-page color spread), O'Garden's work is also found in literary journals such as CALYX, College English, Skylark, The Rockford Review, Whiskey Island Review, The Writer's Forum and Chachalaca Poetry Review.

After a reading at Ensemble Studio Theatre's Octoberfest 2000, Women On Fire premiered in 2001 at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Due to popular demand, Women's Voices, Women's Lives of Riverhead Long Island has revived the show twice since its first staging in December 2002.

In 1987 Irene founded a performing literary magazine called The Art Garden. She has continued to produce, host and write for it for ever since. Art Garden performances have been featured at The Lamb's Theatre in New York, as well as in Garrison, New York. She lives happily with John Pielmeier, her husband of twenty-five years. Most known for his play "Agnes of God," John also writes movies for television. They make their home in Garrison, New York.