Jan Garden Castro Papers

St. Louis native and WashU alumna Jan Garden Castro is an accomplished poet, author, editor, critic, lecturer, curator, and arts activist. She served as co-founder and Executive Director of River Styx literary magazine from 1975 to 1987. Castro was also a founding director of the River Styx Duff’s Performance Series and PM Series.

Castro’s multifaceted career has included work in art and literary criticism, research, and interviews. Notable writers and artists such as Margaret Atwood, Sanford Biggers, Eavan Boland, Chakaia Booker, Allen Ginsberg, John Hollander, James Merrill, Mariko Mori, Lika Mutal, Howard Nemerov, Mark di Suvero, Richard Stella, Quincy Troupe, Nari Ward, and Ai Weiwei, among many others, have been featured in her articles and interviews. Her writings about visual art include The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe, Sonia Delaunay: La Moderne, and sixteen cover stories for Sculpture Magazine, where Castro has been a contributing editor since 1996 (please see the Libraries’ Catalog for available issues of Sculpture Magazine).

The Jan Garden Castro resources in Special Collections consist of both the Jan Garden Castro Papers and a vast collection of cataloged materials donated from her personal library. The Jan Garden Castro Papers include a variety of her personal research materials, educational materials, writings, and correspondence. These items include numerous original transcripts and cassette tapes of her interviews, typescript drafts, photocopies and clippings of books and art reviews, exhibit catalog essays, notebooks and diaries, and Castro’s other writings relating to River Styx. Audiovisual materials include Castro’s taped interviews, episodes of her Double Helix cable TV show The Writers’ Circle, and poetry readings from the Duff’s and River Styx PM Series.

Castro, in tandem with River Styx and Michael Castro, focused from the beginning on publishing and promoting the work of international and minority voices both inside and outside of the academic realm. Her collected materials include many publications, chapbooks, poetry, writings, art, and literary journals not widely found in other libraries. Other notable materials within Castro’s personal donations include print materials, publications, manuscripts, and rare art books collected by Castro throughout her career.

This collection of Castro’s work and personal materials is an especially valuable resource for the study of 20th- 21st century visual art, literary publications, St. Louis history, oral history, and artistic modes of expression by diverse voices. Castro’s own meticulous research and annotations preserved in this collection serve as excellent foundational material for further investigation in these fields and far beyond.

In addition to WashU Libraries Special Collections, Castro has deposited materials at the Thomas Fischer Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, Canada, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library.