This event is now rescheduled for January 21st, 2023 at 3pm.
Please click here to see current mask requirements.
This is a free in-person event, and seating is first come, first served.
At thirty-five, Elsie Robinson feared she’d lost it all. Reeling from a scandalous divorce in 1917, she had no means to support herself and her chronically ill son. She dreamed of becoming a writer and was willing to sacrifice everything for this goal, even swinging a pickax in a gold mine to pay the bills.
When the mine shut down, she moved to the Bay Area. Armed with moxie and samples of her work, she barged into the offices of the Oakland Tribune and was hired on the spot. She went on to become a nationally syndicated columnist and household name whose column ran for over thirty years and garnered more than twenty million readers.
Told in cinematic detail by bestselling author Julia Scheeres and award-winning journalist Allison Gilbert, Listen, World! is the inspiring story of a timeless maverick, capturing what it means to take a gamble on self-fulfillment and find freedom along the way.
Allison Gilbert is an award-winning journalist and author of numerous books including Passed and Present and Parentless Parents. She is host “Women Journalists of 9/11: Their Stories,” a 20-part documentary series produced in collaboration with the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. She interviewed such luminaries as Savannah Guthrie, Maggie Haberman, Dana Bash, and Linda Wertheimer. Allison is the official narrator of the 9/11 Memorial Museum’s historical exhibition audio tour, the only female journalist to be so honored. She writes regularly for the New York Times and other publications. On her blog, she features Q & A’s with some of the most notable names in our culture today including, Arianna Huffington, Jon Stewart, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Dani Shapiro, Gretchen Rubin, and Susan Orlean. She graduated from Georgetown University and lives outside New York City.
Gilbert will be in conversation with Kitty Kelley, an internationally acclaimed writer, whose bestselling biographies focus on some of the most influential and powerful personalities of the last 50 years. Kelley’s last five biographies have been number one on the New York Times best seller list, including her most recent, Oprah: A Biography. She has been honored by her peers with such awards as the 2005 PEN Oakland Censorship Award, and the Outstanding Author Award and Founders’ Award for Career Achievement from the American Society of Journalists and Authors for her “courageous writing on popular culture.” Kelley received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Washington Independent Review of Books. She received the Medal of Merit from the Lotos Club of New York City and was selected by Vanity Fair magazine for its Hall of Fame as part of the “Media Decade.” Kelley has worked as a full-time freelance writer for more than 30 years. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, People, Ladies Home Journal, The New Republic, McCall’s, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and The American Scholar.
