Harriet Sohmers Zwerling

Harriet Sohmers, later Zwerling, is an American writer and artist's model. She was a significant member of the Beat generation, and lived in Paris in the 1950s as part of the bohemian expatriate scene centered around James Baldwin, with whom she shared space in a magazine called New Story.

She translated a novel by the Marquis de Sade for Maurice Girodias' Obelisk Press and worked for the International Herald Tribune. In 1959 she moved to New York and was a part of the literary scene there, publishing stories, (one in the Anthology The Bold New Women issued by Fawcett), co-editing the Provincetown Review and working as an artist's model for some of New York's most important painters. She had lovers of both genders (Susan Sontag was one). In 1963, she married merchant sailor and bohemian Louis Zwerling and had a son, the musician Milo Z. She taught school in Brooklyn for 28 years. In 2003 a collection of her writings, Notes of a Nude Model & Other Pieces was published. She appears in the documentary Still Doing It about the sex lives of older women.