The Painter from Shanghai » (Reprint)

Based in New York, Jennifer Cody Epstein has written for Self, The Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Tribune. She has published short fiction in several journals and was a finalist in a Glimmer Train fiction contest.

Reminiscent of Memoirs of a Geisha, a re-imagining of the life of Pan Yuliang and her transformation from prostitute to post-Impressionist.

The New York Times - Sarah Towers

In this age of memoir and thinly veiled autobiographical fiction, writers who take high dives into deeply imagined waters have become increasingly rare—and valuable. What a pleasure, then, to discover that Jennifer Cody Epstein, whose luminous first novel, The Painter from Shanghai, is based on the actual life of Pan Yuliang, a former child prostitute turned celebrated painter, also happens to be one such writer…In an epigraph, Epstein quotes the English painter John Sloane, who wrote that "though a living cannot be made at art, art makes life worth living. It makes starving, living." In the end, this is precisely what Epstein illustrates in her moving characterization of Pan Yuliang…