The Dead Ladies Show

Many of you have heard the good news—one of Berlin’s favorite institutions, the Dead Ladies Show, is coming to NYC! Molly O’Laughlin will be hosting an intimate, informative evening in which we learn about the lives of three deceased, fabulous women from three living—but equally fabulous—presenters. Join us at the KGB Bar on Wednesday, September 5, from 7–9pm.

The time is ripe—dead ladies are all around us, including in the New York Times’s “Overlooked,” a collection of belated obituaries for those non-white men whose contributions to society over the centuries have gone…overlooked. This will be like that, except live, with slideshows (and social drinking).

Bring friends! Bring acquaintances! Bring strangers! No admission this time (yay, first round!); please buy a drink or two to ensure the future of DLS NYC at KGB.

P.S. Got a dead lady you’d like to present in the future? Get in touch! Three rules: 1. Ladies must have been dead at least a year. 2. Ladies must have identified as ladies in their lifetimes. 3. No fascists.

DOROTHY DAY was a journalist, social activist, and political radical in New York in the 20th century. During the Great Depression, she founded the Catholic Worker Movement, a pacifist and social justice movement comprised of direct aid for the poor and nonviolent political action on their behalf. The Catholic Worker Movement continues to be active throughout the world. Day is a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church.

ROSALIND FRANKLIN’s research helped elucidate the structure of DNA, the molecule that determines the growth, development and reproduction of all living things. She was a chemist and an expert in X-ray crystallography, a technique that generates atomic level structures. Her results were essential in Watson & Crick’s final model of DNA, but the data was shared without her consent, even without her knowledge. Franklin turned her attention to studying viruses, visualizing the first viral atomic structures and studying the structure of polio. At age 38, she passed away from ovarian cancer, possibly due to her prolonged research with X-rays. During her lifetime, fellow scientists recognized her valuable work on coal structures and viruses. However, her essential work on DNA was only recently recognized. Now, she’s received many posthumous honors, including having a medical school and an asteroid named after her.

ANN LOWE dressed pirate queens, American royalty and silver screen starlets during her career that spanned over 50 years. Born in the south, to a long line of dressmakers, she took over the family business at the age of 16 by designing a gown for the Governor of Alabama’s wife. She worked her way from Alabama to a studio on Madison Avenue. Her work is featured in museums around the country, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Through the course of ELIZEBETH SMITH FRIEDMAN’s life, she went from Quaker schoolteacher in Indiana to master cryptanalyst whose work laid the foundations for the NSA. She went up against Shakespeare conspiracy theorists, rumrunners, and even J. Edgar Hoover. Her work in World War II helped prevent the Nazis from taking over South America, but nearly all of it was a national secret until after her death.

Your presenters:
Mary Kate Skehan has worked in publishing for five years and currently works in marketing at Penguin.

Chioma Madubata will earn her MD/PhD from Columbia in 2019. She studied cancer biology during her PhD. She got her start with dead ladies early, having attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Maryland.

Candace Munroe’s career in fashion has taken her to Gilt, Bloomingdale’s, and Eileen Fisher. Having earned a master’s in business from NYU Stern, she now works at Tommy Hilfiger.

Molly O’Laughlin is a writer and translator who recently moved back to NYC from Berlin, Germany.