Boston Book Festival

Join us for a conversation with three writers who explore how women have struggled to win influence in U.S. politics and how laws and public policies, mostly designed by men, have profoundly affected women’s lives. Jackie, the fifth novel by bestselling author Dawn Tripp, explores the complex emotional truths behind the myths surrounding the Kennedys, to give readers a nuanced story of a brilliant woman who forged a legacy out of grief, shaping history even as she lived it. In A Termination, award-winning poet and memoirist Honor Moore recounts her harrowing experience in the 1960s with an unwanted pregnancy and raises the alarm about a world without reproductive freedoms. Gioia Diliberto’s eighth book, Firebrands: The Untold Story of Four Women Who Made and Unmade Prohibition, relates the fierce battle waged by women over Prohibition in the first expression of female political power after winning the right to vote. The cross-genre session will be moderated by Pulitzer Prize winner Debby Applegate, whose most recent book, Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age, depicts the life of the notorious madam who wielded unprecedented power in the 1920s in New York City’s demimonde of gangsters, politicians, policemen, columnists and society figures. Sponsored by Beacon Hill Books & Cafe.