born June 12, 1892, Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y., U.S.
died June 18?, 1982, New York, N.Y.
U.S. writer.
Barnes worked as an artist and journalist in her youth. She went to Paris in 1920, where she became a well-known figure in the literary scene. She wrote plays, short stories, and poems; her masterpiece, the novel Nightwood (1936), tells of the homosexual and heterosexual loves of five extraordinary people. After returning to New York in 1940, she wrote little and lived reclusively.