SHERILL TIPPINS
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"Tippins tells riveting stories...but she also captures a much grander, and more pressing narrative: that of the ongoing battle between art and capitalism in the city."

--THE NEW YORKER
Books

         Now in Paperback

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Winner of the Marfield Prize 
National Award for Arts Writing

The Chelsea Hotel, since its founding by a visionary French architect in 1884, has been an icon of American invention: a cultural dynamo and haven for the counterculture, all in one astonishing building. Sherill Tippins, author of the acclaimed February House, delivers a masterful and endlessly entertaining history of the Chelsea and of successive generations of artists who have cohabited and created there, among them John Sloan, Edgar Lee Masters, Thomas Wolfe, Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Sam Shepard, Sid Vicious, and Dee Dee Ramone. Now as legendary as the artists it has housed and the countless creative collaborations it has sparked, the Chelsea has always stood as a mystery as well: Why and how did this hotel become the largest and longest-lived artists' community in the known world? Inside the Dream Palace is the intimate and definitive story.
A Slate.com Best Book of the Year
A New Yorker Book to Watch Out For
A San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book

A Guardian U.K. Readers' Choice

A Spectator Book of the Year
Winner of France's Prix du Livre Fourier-Considerant

         
​             "The shuttle is whirring, the temperature's rising,

              everybody's at the party, and she's a perfect host."
                                                  - London Review of Books
Learn More

                       News



​The BBC's "Words and Music" Celebrates the Hotel Chelsea.
"For about ten dollars a week you could rent a room next to Edie Sedgwick, or hang out on the roof with Allen Ginsberg..." A reading from INSIDE THE DREAM PALACE and songs from Kurt Weill's "Mahagonny" accompany this BBC-3 exploration of the world's most intriguing hostelries.
February 16, 2025


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"Read Your Way Through New York City"
Novelist Herman Diaz commends FEBRUARY HOUSE as a classic reference for Brooklyn literary history.
Jan. 30, 2025



"I open my notebook to write...What is there to say? What can a song, any piece of art, do at a time like this?"

Composer Gabriel Kahane, presiding over a new production of the musical, FEBRUARY HOUSE, based on the book by Sherill Tippins, ponders the significance at this moment of the story of artists finding themselves in the worst of times.
Jan. 17, 2025



 "Ghosts of the Chelsea Hotel (and Other Rock and Roll Stories)" wins the Grand Prix at the 2023 Japan Indies Film Festival.
Chip Baker's documentary, featuring actor Michael Imperioli, author Sherill Tippins, and others, and also named one of the "Best Documentaries in 2023" by W Magazine, is now showing in theaters across the United States and Europe.
Nov. 27, 2024



"A warm reminder that love lingers, no matter how fleeting, not matter how strange."
New England Theatre Geek praises FEBRUARY HOUSE, the musical, presented by the Treehouse Collective at Boston Center for the Arts.
September 30, 2024


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New York Times Critic Molly Young features FEBRUARY HOUSE in "Read Like the Wind."
"Tippins intersperses deep dives into the residents’ various creative endeavors ...with tales of sexual swashbuckling, wild parties and delightfully petty feuds...It's all smartly and sympathetically told." 
August 24, 2024



"You can still feel the history."
INSIDE THE DREAM PALACE author Sherill Tippins tours the reborn Chelsea Hotel with co-owner Sean MacPherson and CBS Morning News host Alina Cho.
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"Not Helplessly Strange" 
Lily DeBell recounts her intimate encounter with FEBRUARY HOUSE in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

                 Featured Events 
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June 2-8, 2025
New York, NY

Screenings of the  17th Annual New York City Independent Film Festival selection "Ghosts of the Chelsea Hotel (and other Rock and Roll Stories), featuring actor Michael imperioli, author Sherill Tippins, and others.
The Producers Club
358 W. 44th Street


May 5, 2025
Dublin, Ireland

Host Jim O'Donohughe explores the Irish poet Brendan Behan's life at the Chelsea Hotel, with recordings made at the hotel by Behan himself and contributions by INSIDE THE DREAM PALACE author Sherill Tippins and others, in an audio documentary for RTÉ, Ireland.
​https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/brendan-behan-confessions-on-record/
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February 21 - March 2, 2025
Evanston, IL
"February House," the musical

A new production of Gabriel Kahane's and Seth Bockley's musical adaptation of Sherill Tippins' FEBRUARY HOUSE, originally staged at the New York Public Theater.
Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts
1929 Campus Drive 
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February 16, 2025
Evanston, IL
"Art Making  in a Time of Crisis"

Playwrights Julie Marie Myatt and Jessica Thuebus, artist/activist Cynthia Weiss, and Chicago Poet Laureate avery r. young, and actors from the Wirtz Center's production of FEBRUARY HOUSE, based on the book by Sherill Tippins, will explore the methods through which artists have resisted tyranny and oppression throughout the ages.

Evanston Public Library
1703 Orrington Avenue


October 17 (SOLD OUT) & October 21, 2024
Barcelona, Spain
"Ghosts of the Chelsea Hotel (and Other Rock and Roll Stories)" 

Cinemes Girona presents Chip Baker's award-winning documentary, featuring actor Michael Imperioli, author Sherill Tippins, and many others.
Cine Girona
Carrer de Girona, 175
L'Eixample


September 27 - Oct. 13, 2024
​Boston, MA
"February House," the musical

The Treehouse Collective presents Gabriel Kahane's and Seth Bockley's musical adaptation of Sherill Tippins' FEBRUARY HOUSE, originally staged at the New York Public Theater.
Plaza Theatres at Boston Center for the Arts
539 Tremont Street

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