Sartor, Margaret 1959–

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Sartor, Margaret 1959–

PERSONAL:

Born August 12, 1959, in Monroe, LA; daughter of Fred Williams (a surgeon) and Tommie Sue (a painter) Sartor; married Alex Harris (a photographer and professor), December 18, 1982; children: two. Education: Attended Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, 1977-78, and Southern Methodist University, Paris, France Program, 1979; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, B.A. (with honors), 1981; graduate study at North Carolina State University, 1983-85.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Durham, NC. Office—Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, 1317 W. Pettigrew Street, Durham, NC 27705. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Writer and photographer. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, in design and production, 1981-82; John Ulmstead Hospital, Butner, NC, special education photography teacher at Children's Psychiatric Institute, 1982-83; Carnegie Corp. of New York City, New York, NY, graphic designer, 1985-86; North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, adjunct lecturer in photography, 1986-91; Duke University, Durham, NC, research associate and lecturer in public policy and documentary studies, 1991—, editorial advisor for DoubleTake, Center for Documentary Studies, 1994-98, consultant on creation of the William Gedney Photographs and Writings Web site, and curator of photographs exhibitions. Duke University, graphic designer, 1982—; freelance graphic designer and photographer. International Center of Photography, guest curator, 1983, 1986; photographs exhibited at solo and group shows throughout the United States, 1980—; curator or designer of photographic exhibitions, 1984—, including "Short Distances and Definite Places: The Photographs of William Gedney," San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2000; work represented in collections, including those of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, Ogden Museum of Southern Art at University of New Orleans, LA, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, and Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL.

AWARDS, HONORS:

President's Scholar, Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, 1979; design awards, Print Magazine, 1984, 1997; first place award, book design and production excellence, Rocky Mountain Publishers Association, 1991, for River of Traps; North Carolina Visual Artists Project grant, 1993; selection for one of "top ten photography books" of the year, Village Voice, 2000, for What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with husband, Alex Harris) Gertrude Blom: Bearing Witness, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1983.

(Editor) South Africa: The Cordoned Heart, Norton (New York, NY), 1986.

(Editor and designer) Robert Coles, Their Eyes Meeting the World: The Drawings and Paintings of Children, Houghton-Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1992.

(Editor, with Geoff Dyer) What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney, Lyndhurst/Norton (New York, NY), 1999.

Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets and Growing Up in the 1970s (nonfiction), Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2006.

Also designer and consulting editor for other books, including book designer for River of Traps by William deBuys and Alex Harris, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1990, and work on Beyond the Barricades: Popular Resistance in South Africa, Aperture, 1989. Contributor of photographs to books, including A New Life: Stories and Photographs from the Suburban South, edited by Alex Harris and Alice George, 1996, In Their Mother's Eyes, 2001, and Black: A Celebration of Culture, edited by Deborah Willis, 2004. Contributor of articles, reviews, poems, and photographs to periodicals, including Irish Times, Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Esquire, Popular Photography, New Yorker, New York Times, Carolina Quarterly, Windhover, Cellar Door, DoubleTake, and Aperture.

SIDELIGHTS:

Margaret Sartor, a lecturer at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, is an acclaimed photographer and documentarian. Her photographs have appeared in such publications as Esquire, DoubleTake, and the New Yorker, as well as A New Life: Stories and Photographs from the Suburban South and other books. Sartor is also the author of Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets and Growing Up in the 1970s, an "always entertaining and often gripping" memoir, observed Library Journal critic Stacy Shotsberger.

Beginning in 1972, when Sartor was twelve, Miss American Pie chronicles the author's coming of age in small-town Louisiana. According to a critic in Kirkus Reviews, "Sartor's near-daily entries tread a free line between embarrassing self-consciousness and endearing candor as they delineate her intimate thoughts." The subjects she discusses are many and varied; the work blends Sartor's thoughts about her loving but annoying family and high school crushes with her reflections on civil rights and spirituality. "Margaret is appealing," wrote William Grimes in the New York Times Book Review. "An incomprehensible world lies before her, and she is determined to figure it out and make a place for herself in it. This unfolding life project is fascinating to watch. In a matter of hours she can swing wildly from ecstasy to despair, from total incomprehension (‘Math is stupid’) to overweening certainty (‘I understand Math’)." "Miss American Pie isn't a portrait of adolescence, it is adolescence, with all the sorrows and yearnings and tenderness that attend that age," observed Washington Post reviewer Carolyn See. "It's our youth served up to us once again on a golden plate."

Sartor once told CA: "I work primarily in the field of documentary photography and writing. I try to pay attention to the way people actually live their lives, and to describe what I see as clearly and as well as I am able. That is my challenge and my goal. Because, ultimately, the real world is always more surprising, more complicated, and more mysterious than anything I could ever invent to say about it."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Sartor, Margaret, Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets and Growing Up in the 1970s, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2006.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2006, Gillian Engberg, review of Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets and Growing Up in the 1970s, p. 8.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2006, review of Miss American Pie, p. 511.

Library Journal, April 1, 2006, Stacy Shotsberger, review of Miss American Pie, p. 94.

New York Times Book Review, July 5, 2006, William Grimes, "A Southern Girl's Dusty Diaries as a Window on the 70s," review of Miss American Pie.

Publishers Weekly, September 21, 1992, review of Their Eyes Meeting the World: The Drawings and Paintings of Children, p. 81; March 6, 2006, review of Miss American Pie, p. 55.

St. Petersburg Times, July 9, 2006, Claire Dederer, "Dear Diary: You Won't Believe This …," review of Miss American Pie.

School Library Journal, August, 2006, Beth Gallego, review of Miss American Pie, p. 142.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), August 20, 2006, Alyce Miller, "Examining a Teen's Soul and the South in the 70s," review of Miss American Pie, p. 9.

Washington Post, July 7, 2006, Carolyn See, "Hi, Hi, Miss American Pie," review of Miss American Pie, p. C3.