Megan Marshall,  Eve LaPlante and Susan Ware
3:00-4:30 p.m. Weymouth High School Humanities Center, 1 Wildcat Way, South Weymouth, Mass.
Admission is $15 per person, $10 for AAHS members. Reservations are not necessary.
Abigail Adams Historical Society (AAHS), stewards of the Abigail Adams Birthplace, commemorates Women’s History Month by presenting an expert discussion panel on Trail-Blazing Women: Anne Hutchinson, Margaret Fuller, and Amelia Earhart.Â
Three distinguished authors will share insights into the lives and legacies of these important figures in American history, who defied the conventions of their day. Time will be allowed for questions, and a book-signing and sale will immediately follow the presentation.
Eve LaPlante, who holds degrees from Princeton and Harvard, will speak about founding mother and religious nonconformist Anne Hutchinson, whose life she detailed in her highly praised book American Jezebel. Ms. LaPlante is also the author of Salem Witch Judge, a biography of Samuel Sewall that won the 2008 Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfiction; Seized: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy in Medicine, History, and Art; and, most recently, Marmee & Louisa, a narrative portrait of Louisa May Alcott’s relationship with her mother, Abigail, which was named an NPR top ten book of 2012. Ms. LaPlante is also the editor of the first collection of Abigail May Alcott’s writings, My Heart Is Boundless.
Megan Marshall will discuss her 2014 Pulitzer Prize- and Massachusetts Book Award-winning biography of Margaret Fuller, a leading Transcendentalist, America’s first female war correspondent, and a passionate advocate of personal liberation and political freedom. Ms. Marshall, who teaches nonfiction writing and archival research in the MFA program at Emerson College, is also the author of The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, which won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, and the Massachusetts Book Award, as well as being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography.
A pioneer in the field of women’s history and a leading feminist biographer, Susan Ware will speak about her biography of Amelia Earhart, Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism. An author and editor of numerous books on twentieth-century U.S. history, Ms. Ware has taught at New York University and Harvard, and has has long been associated with Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library, where she currently serves as senior advisor. Her most recent book is Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women’s Sports.
Books will be offered for sale at the event.
Serving as moderator will be Michelle Marchetti Coughlin, author of One Colonial Woman’s World: The Life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit and an AAHS board member.
