Penelope Rowlands

Writing career

After A Dash of Daring was published, Rowlands was the subject of media attention in both the U.S. and Europe. In the United Kingdom, BBC Radio 4 credited her with having "revived Snow's legacy." After Rowlands discussed Carmel Snow's legacy in a live 2006 interview with Martha Kearny on Radio 4's Woman's Hour, Dash was featured across Great Britain as a 'Notable Book' at Waterstone's, then the second-largest British bookselling chain. Other European publications that ran articles on the book include La Repubblica and The Irish Times.

Dash's American press coverage included a full-page review in the New York Times Book Review; an extensive cover story in Time Off, a weekly arts and entertainment supplement included with the Princeton Packet and other newspapers in the Packet chain; and a multipage feature article in the San Francisco Chronicle about Rowlands and the book. The Chronicle article was subheaded "A new book captures a largely forgotten trend-setter's time", a reference to the fact that, although Snow discovered and / or fostered the reputations of numerous artistic figures - including photographers (Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson); writers (Truman Capote, Carson McCullers); fashion designers (Cristobal Balenciaga, Christian Dior); and others - in the pages of her Bazaar, her reputation was eclipsed by Diana Vreeland, one of her most famous hires.

Avedon interpreted this phenomenon to Rowlands in an interview for the book: "It's because Vreeland lasted. [Carmel] was older, right? Much older, and she faded before stardom became the thing. There weren't stars in her day. Fashion people weren't stars. Carmel was the only star there was." First serial rights to Dash were sold to Vogue, which excerpted the book in its September 2005 issue—an unexpected occurrence, given that Snow was long associated with a rival fashion magazine. UK first serial rights to Dash were sold to British Harper's Bazaar for its January 2006 issue.

Rowlands's latest book The Beatles Are Here! 50 Years After the Band Arrived in America, Writers, Musicians, and Other Fans Remember, was published to coincide with the anniversary of the group's arrival in the US. The Beatles! documents the impact of the group's arrival - a major cultural event - in texts and interviews of those who witnessed it (or were influenced by the band later on). In a segment on NBC's The Today Show (which also featured Ringo Starr), Rowlands described the experience of Beatlemania as being "crystallized in this moment. It was like being part of a big movement. We mattered."

The origin of this book was a 1964 article in the New York Times, written by Gay Talese and accompanied by a photograph of a screaming Rowlands with four other girls, an image that became iconic and was published around the world. The book's contributors include the disc jockey "Cousin Brucie," AKA Bruce Morrow; such writers as Joe Queenan, Pico Iyer, Lisa See, and others; Rowlands and three of the other girls in the original photograph (who found each other again [through the photo] decades after it was taken); and musicians Janis Ian, Gabriel Kahane, Renee Fleming, and others.

Reviewers praised the book James Wolcott described it in Vanity Fair magazine as "A goody bag of tributes and recollections," while the music critic of The Boston Globe, James Reed, called it "One of the more fascinating new books on the Fab Four’s impact."

Rowlands's other books include the 2011 anthology, Paris Was Ours, which looked at the transformative effect the French capital has had on a disparate, international group of contemporary writers, including Edmund White, Diane Johnson, the Cuban novelist Zoe Valdes, Judith Thurman, and Rowlands herself. The book received notice in part for its multicultural approach—its contributors included the Iraqi-born Assyrian editor Samuel Shimon and a homeless French blogger.

Paris Was Ours was chosen as the January 2011, Book of the Month by National Geographic Traveler magazine. Reviewers praised the book for its complex view of the City of Light. Rowlands discussed Paris Was Ours '​ somewhat ambiguous view of Paris, and her own experiences in that city, in an interview with Mike Cuthbert of AARP'S Prime Time Radio.

Rowlands's journalistic work includes articles on cultural subjects written for publications such as Vogue, WSJ magazine, The Daily Beast, and others. She has been a contributing writer to Architectural Digest and a contributing editor to ARTnews and Metropolis magazines.

She is currently working on a biographical work about Aaron Burr's later years.

Biography

Born in London to an American mother and a British father, Rowlands migrated to the United States with her family at the age of five and was raised in her mother's native New York City. She is a citizen of both the U.S. and Great Britain. She received a B.A. from Bard College and an M.A. from Stanford University. She has lived in California and Paris but now resides in Princeton, New Jersey.