Djuna Barnes began her career in 1913 as a freelance journalist and illustrator for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. By 1914, she had established herself as a highly sought-after feature reporter and interviewer in New York City. Her connections with the bohemian community of Greenwich Village allowed her to publish prose, poetry, illustrations, and one-act plays in both popular magazines and avant-garde literary journals. During this early period, she published her first illustrated volume of poetry, The Book of Repulsive Women, in 1915.
In 1921, a commission for McCall's brought Barnes to Paris, where she lived for a decade and became a key figure in the expatriate modernist scene. During her time in Europe, she published several diverse works, including the collection A Book (1923)—later expanded as A Night Among the Horses (1929)—as well as Ladies Almanack (1928) and the novel Ryder (1928).
During the 1930s, Barnes traveled extensively across England, Paris, New York, and North Africa. This restless period culminated in the publication of her masterpiece, Nightwood (1936), which became a cult classic of lesbian fiction and a landmark of modernist literature. Barnes returned to New York in 1939, where she spent the remainder of her life. Her final major work, the verse play The Antiphon, was published in 1958, and she lived in Greenwich Village until her death in 1982.
