Virtually Home: With the Oakwood Country Club Book Club of Kansas City, August 10, 2023

This was my first appearance at a book club, prompted by the request of my beloved cousin, Cathy Schultz with her daughters, Jamie and Mindy, and my first cousin from the other side of the family, Patricia Schere, too. I was on Zoom; everyone else at a lunch table at Kansas City’s Oakwood Country Club. For St. Louis audiences, I often give special space to Martha Gelhorn (and even that great profo-second-wave feminist Fannie Hurst), and for this Kansas City group, I shared reference to the book’s  Christine Craft, the Too Old, Too Ugly, and Not Deferential to Men television anchor; the Calvin Trillin-Charlayne Hunter-Gault passages; and the connection of cousin Mindy, from her days at Times Books/Random House, which coincided with the publication of my 1999 Fannie: The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst. Mindy was the book’s publicist.

Many had read in and the experience was a true pleasure. Here’s the Zoom recording of the event.

Here’s the group, minus several who were unfortunately off screen. It included two writers, and I’ve included a second screenshot with identifiers for my adored cousins. I wish these screenshots were in clearer focus because they are all so beautiful, in more ways than their faces.