The Mind-Baby Problem -- "The Presiding Genius of Her Own Body" -- Outlaw Mothering: Alice Neel (1900-1984) -- All the Time: Art Monsters and Maintenance Work -- The Discomfort Zone: Sex and Love -- Incompatible Pleasures: Doris Lessing (1919-2013) -- The Discomfort Zone: The Unavailable Muse -- "Poems Are Housework": Books versus Babies -- All Happy Families: Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) -- The Discomfort Zone: Ghosts -- The Discomfort Zone: Late Success -- Mother, Poet, Warrior: Audre Lorde (1934-1992) -- The Discomfort Zone: Not Being All There -- Freedom: Alice Walker (1944-) -- The Baby on the Writing Desk; or, Two Things at Once -- Her Own Version: Angela Carter (1940-1992) -- Time and the Story

"An insightful and provocative exploration of the relationship between motherhood and art through the lives of women artists and writers. What does it mean to create, not in "a room of one's own," but in a domestic space? Do children and genius rule each other out? In The Baby on the Fire Escape, award-winning biographer Julie Phillips traverses the shifting terrain where motherhood and creativity converge. With fierce empathy and vivid prose, Phillips evokes the intimate struggles of brilliant artists and writers, including Doris Lessing, who had to choose between her motherhood and herself; Ursula K. Le Guin, who found productive stability in family life; Audre Lorde, whose queer, polyamorous union allowed her to raise children on her own terms; and Alice Neel, who once, to finish a painting, was said to have left her baby on the fire escape of her New York apartment. A meditation on maternal identity and artistic greatness, The Baby on the Fire Escape illuminates some of the most pressing conflicts in contemporary women's lives"--