That’s right, folks, we’re already up to lucky 13!
Our December show will occur on TUESDAY!, December 10, from 7–9pm at the KGB Bar (85 E 4th Street, at Second Avenue). Doors will open a little after 6:30pm. Come all the way upstairs (two flights) and BYO food if you’re peckish!
This December, we’ll learn about a radical, Trinidadian-American activist and journalist, a landscape architect to the stars, and an iconic writer and filmmaker. These inspiring ladies will be presented, respectively, by a rad historian, an editorial whiz, and a book-to-film guru. Emceed by Molly O’Laughlin Kemper!
Free admission, ~ * but * ~ we do have a bar minimum to meet: please plan to buy a couple drinks to ensure the future of DLS NYC at KGB’s RED ROOM.
CLAUDIA JONES (1915–1964) was a communist, activist and journalist and born in Trinidad, raised in Harlem, and who lived the last decade of her life in the UK. She rose through the ranks of the Communist Party USA in the 1930s and 40s, before she was subject to state repression and was eventually imprisoned and deported from the US. In London she started the West Indian Gazette and organized what became Notting Hill carnival. A brilliant and radical thinker, black feminist, anti-imperialist and community organizer, Jones is an inspiring dead lady with a searing clarity about fighting racial and imperial violence that remains crucial to us today.
RUTH SHELLHORN (1909–2006), created close to 400 landscape designs throughout a sixty-year career that helped define the distinctive mid-century regional aesthetic of Southern California. She was landscape architect to the stars, including Spencer Tracy, Gene Autry, and Barbara Stanwyck, but is most well-known for her award-winning landscape designs for the Bullock’s department stores and Fashion Square shopping centers, projects that redefined the potential of commercial spaces, and for her work with Walt Disney on the design of Disneyland, where she used plants as a means of creating imaginary worlds both fantastic and familiar.
NORA EPHRON (1941–2012) was a journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and filmmaker responsible for some of the funniest, most heart-wrenching, and iconic moments in pop culture. As the daughter of screenwriters, she grew up developing her quick wit and penchant for storytelling. She attended Wellesley College and graduated into the feminist revolution where she contributed her voice to the movement with her clever-yet-honest articles about womanhood. From there, she became an essayist and novelist, only to find her way into Hollywood, ultimately writing and directing such classics as When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle, and You’ve Got Mail.
About your presenters:
KATE BIRKBECK is in her third year of living in the US, her second year of a PhD program in American history, and her first year of going to the gym, which she has recently found she enjoys.
SARAH GOLDBERG is an Associate Editor at Scribner where she works on both fiction and nonfiction books. Unless raking leaves counts, she doesn’t particularly like gardening but does enjoy visiting gardens.
JACK GREENBAUM heads up the New York office of The Arlook Group, overseeing literary management and film/TV development. In addition to managing traditional screenwriters and filmmakers, he represents playwrights, authors, journalists, comedians, and a maximum-security prisoner. He also develops for film and television, including projects with TriStar, HBO Max, Berlanti Productions, and Star Thrower Entertainment.
The Dead Ladies Show 