| Date |
Topic |
| September 25,
2006 |
Guest presenters were “The
Redheads,” poet Page Dougherty Delano, fiction-writer Ellen Geist, and
playwright Katt Lissard, who spoke about their collective memoir-in-progress on
their years of doing working-class work as members of a national maoist
organization. Kathy Chamberlain moderated. |
| November 6,
2006 |
Author Andrea Schultz, Senior Editor at Harcourt,
and Mickey Pearlman, member of the National Book Critics Circle and editor of
seven books, spoke about “Changing Trends in Publishing.” Nancy Rubin
Stuart moderated. |
| December 4,
2006 |
Guest speakers on the subject of “Finding and
Interpreting Sources for Nineteenth-Century Women” were Martha Hodes,
author of The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the
Nineteenth Century, and Sally Mitchell, whose nine books include Daily
Life in Victorian England and Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist,
Journalist, Reformer. Barbara McManus moderated. |
| January 8,
2007 |
Trudy Balch moderated a problem-solving session on
how to deal with an abundance of research materials: “Filing and Storing
Challenges.” Seminar members Dona Munker and Victoria Olsen gave talks to
launch the discussion. |
| February 5,
2007 |
Guest presenters Nan Bauer-Maglin, editor of Cut
Loose, (Mostly) Older Women Talk about the End of (Mostly) Long-Term
Relationships, and Merle Froschl, a contributor to the book, spoke about
divorce, widowhood, and the single life. Claire Morris Stern moderated. |
| March 5,
2007 |
Long-time seminar member Blanche Wiesen Cook spoke
about her work on the third and final volume (in progress) of her Eleanor
Roosevelt biography, focusing on the interplay of subject and context. She
discussed how to do justice to both when you have as protagonist a complex
woman who is part of a far-reaching political and social world. Bell Gale
Chevigny moderated. |
| April 9,
2007 |
“Letters: Challenges and Opportunities”
was the topic. Seminar member Susan Hertog, writing a dual portrait of Dorothy
Thompson and Rebecca West, spoke about ways to use letters in a biography, and
was joined by guest Constancia “Dinky” Romilly, who, as a family
member, worked with editor Peter Y. Sussman on a collection of her mother's
letters: Decca: The letters of Jessica Mitford. Sydney Ladensohn Stern
moderated. |
| May 7, 2007 |
Guest Farah Jasmine Griffin (“Harlem Nocturne:
Women, Politics, and the Arts in New York New York, 1938-1952”) and
seminar member Carla Kaplan (“Miss Anne in Harlem: the White Women of the
Black Renaissance”) talked about writing group biography. Carla L.
Peterson moderated. |
