Featuring and Elizabeth Gilbert im so sorry elizabeth the pilbara and kate zernike the we are so happy to have them all here to discuss their their books and to honor womens history month. So i can kate to nikki is a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter and, author of the just released book, the thousand. Nancy hopkins a mighty in the fight for women in science Allison Gilbert is an Emmy Award Winning journalist and coauthor of alice in the world how the intrepid Elsie Robinson became americas most read woman, a groundbreaking biography that the wall street journal receives is an important to womens history and Elisabeth Griffith historian, a former leader in the National Womens political caucus and womens Campaign Fund and author of formidable american women and the fight for equality the 1922 2020. But far available for sale and finding after the program and i youth give them a very warm welcome welcome here to. I also qualify as a biographer too. My first book was a biography of elizabeth really stanton that ken briggs into his only documentary about women not for ourselves alone but were here tonight to about these two authors and their biographies. Hes ever since the era of ancient warriors knights going on quests or the at the admirable warriors or generals or weems writing in accurately about George Washington biographies have been used to inspire young men with examples of character and courage. Very few people initially. Well, for centuries, wrote about women if they did, they were generally lessons in chastity, stories about virgin mothers, virgin martyrs, virgin queens. These were not lessons in leadership to inspire us. But publishers and prize committees have recognized what all of you know that are very appealing. They tell us an inside story. The best ones are not diaries or date books. They go deeper, although we all do love those intimate details. The best biography put their subject in the era of so Allison Gilbert with her listen world the intrepid life of Elsie Robinson talks about a woman who came to authority before women had any power. Born 1873. Women dont get the vote until 20. This is an era of powerlessness for women no rights to property, no rights to keep earnings, no right to divorce no right to child custody, no reproductive rights at all. This is a writing about a woman and her in this era where women no power. Kate zernike, the exceptions has written about Nancy Hopkins, a molecular biologist at m. I. T. , who will come of age during the resurgence of the Womens Movement during the 1960s. But it takes her a long time to understand the era in which she is living and that for herself. So you have both written about exceptional women taking them in chronological order. Tell us why they were exceptional. Well, thank you all for coming here tonight. We are so grateful and i so grateful to you, betsy, for reading this discussion. I am thrilled Elsie Robinson came from nothing she had no connections. She was impoverished, a time really having trouble to make ends meet and. What she knew came is the ultimate heroine story. She became the highest paid writer in the entire William Randolph hearst media empire. Her between the 1920s and the 1950 is and she was the most read woman in the entire during that time in earning a measure of the hearst platform was just there was no one comparable media outlet then to be a hearst writer. And so she used that platform to saying was on her mind and which we can get into there was no holding back for Elsie Robinson. And what about professor hopkins . Yeah, so Nancy Hopkins, thank you for having us and for your introduction. Nancy hopkins, as you said, was a molecular biologist. She joined i first met her. Sorry. After i first met her in 1999 when i was a reporter for the boston globe and so im a presenter. And i started out when i was a reporter for the boston globe and i got a tip that there was something going on with women and discrimination at mit. And i was given i was given the name of Nancy Hopkins, and i called her up and she said that, in fact, at mit, she was actually going to acknowledge discrimination against women on its faculty and they were going do this, which was striking to me. You know, my thats a man bites dog story. But this was striking to me. But was striking to me further was that nancy, the reason they were going to do this is that a group of women at mit had gotten together and gathered data to look at how men and women were treated differently and they approve of their case so much that. Oh, thank you. They prove in their case so successfully that the administration of mit had no really no choice but to say, you know we okay, we admit this. So nancy and the other women there, 16 women in the book, and there are 16 women in this group, they were exceptional in that most of them were hired at mit in the early 1970s, the beginning of affirmative action. So they had been in the 1960s, some of them in the 1950s. And it really was exceptional to have women in particularly elite scientific labs, but really in science at all. This is because science was a field that was very dominated by men. Men were the lab heads. There were antinepotism rules that kept kept, women that are kept where universities would only hire the husband, not the wife. So it was really unusual for them to get jobs. But i also talk about the exceptions that theres sort of a double meaning. There is a double of my title because the exceptions was really how these women explain their discrimination over the years and again well get into this but but time something happened to them they thought oh thats just know thats just a one off thats just thats just like a conflict or its me, its just the situation. So it was really only over time and once they came together, led by nancy, that they realized that this was these exceptions were in fact, the rule. So these two women are journalists, as alison has written about a journalist asked. And one of the things i so like about her is that Elsie Robinson writes verve and energy, and a lot opinion, and the only way you can tell the difference between the biographer and the subject is that when shes quoting Elsie Robinson, the the print is in italics, but otherwise this book flows with energy and this is a compel long book of a woman who scrape herself up. So pause. I ask the second part. Now keep. I like what youre saying, christine. Frankly, i thought when i wrote this book, which is a lot about black and White American women. After they got the vote that i had earned a second ph. D. , an american africanamerican history, i learning so much that i had never been taught. But case degrees are in journalism. She has scientists in her family tree. But i would think writing this book would have earned you a molecular biology. So my question is about writing about what you were able to use, what the challenges were about, even vocabulary, and using a language you might not have been so comfortable with. You talk a little bit about use of in your book, how you identify people, how you address chronology going back and forth do you straightforwardly go through and then if you might, i could ask, this is my follow up but you had to work. You worked with a coauthor. Yeah. You worked with a subject whos still alive. Yeah. I imagine that for authors those are challenging issues. So start anywhere. Start with start with. How did you find elsie . Oh, she. Sure, i speak loudly. Sure. How . I found out about Elsie Robinson. Its the first biography about Elsie Robinson to be written. And so the one question, of course. Well, then why you and how did you discover her . Why you all hear that hers is the first biography ever to have been written. Yes, yes. And it actually is a really personal story. It only came to me because as my mother died. And what i mean by that is i grew up here in new york. And shortly after i college, my mother passed away. My brother and i went to our childhood home in the bronx not too far away. And we were clearing out our home and getting it ready to sell and inside. One of my mothers books that we were packing fell out of a piece of paper that she had stuffed inside. And in this honest piece of paper, she had retired. Remember that old onion skin paper from back in the day. My mother had retired on a manual typewriter. The most tough love, inyourface poem, grief i had ever read and it was attributed to someone named Elsie Robinson. And i turned to my brother and i said, whos Elsie Robinson . You know, is it a friend of moms . Is it an old College Roommate . And we both had no idea Elsie Robinson was. And it set me on this course of learning. I could possibly could this what turns out to be this american died demo trailblazer badass. Incredible. Well have to return the bad part because shes not really going depth here. Yes. Tell me what you want. Sorry. So about how we hate to talk about the science. Oh, was it a challenge to write in such detail about this is really high level science. Yeah. So another reason that the women in my book, you know, nancy, as i said, graduated from college in 64 and then gets her ph. D. In 1971, starts mit in 1973, and she doesnt start she she doesnt consider herself an activist, not a feminist all. And it takes her 20 years to become an activist and a feminist and to realize that shes being discriminated. And one of the reasons is as for other women in the book, they really wanted to be known as scientists, not activists and not, you know, not necessarily feminists and so but when it came time to writing the book, they really know if i was going to memorialize in this way. They wanted to be known as scientists. They dont you know, when talk to, you know, female scientists, its you know, they say, i just want be known as a scientist, not a female scientist, which is understandable. So it was very important to the women in the book, as you say, many of whom are several whom are still alive. And to nancy, whos very much alive, that i celebrate the science and so it was really important to me to tell the story. It is incredibly difficult, partly its its technical terms. You know, i learned how to say and spell prokhorov try to the smallest most abundant organism in the ocean but and also in one of nancys big experiments that makes up through the end of the book that, shes trying to get this thing done. Its a very slow process, so she has to figure out things out. And its like, how am i going to make this interesting . And you just have to sort of keep reminding people why its important and what her next target is and all the different steps. But me. Theres one particular experiment is, as you say, a molecular biologist got into science, fell in love with science in a one hour lecture taught by james watson four months after he and Francis Crick won the nobel prize for decoding the structure of dna. And in that one hour lecture, she just like she just realizes that this new Revolution Genetics is going to tell her everything she needs to know the world. Shes 19 at the time. She then goes on to do one of the most important early experiments in gene expression. So, in other words, if all of our cells had the same genetic makeup, have the same dna, why . How does one cell know to become one . You know, how does dna know when to turn on a turn off . How does one cell become a hand, one cell become an ear or whatever so that express . And i knew it was really important because i had say, you know, establish for scientists reading it, its you know, its old hat at this point. So i had to make fresh for anybody who came to this with science but but understandable to people who who cant do it without any science. So finally what i mean it really was a breakthrough at one point i just thought, oh this is a story like every experiment is telling a story. And so thats what i tried to do and do you want to go your follow up but but well yeah keep going for a while. Yeah the science was was was actually once i got it particular early experiment i was like yes and its so its thrilling. And you realize you realize that, you know why these people got to do it. So my favorite question of everyone turned out to be tell me how you got into science. Ive been talking recently about one of the women, sylvia, whos a chemist, a physical chemist, which is a very, very tough field for for women. And she got into science. She went to her library in suburban chicago, a nine year old, and she was working her way through the books. The what is series of books . So, like, you know, what is American Revolution . What is it . And she comes to what is chemistry right because she doesnt know its chemistry, science, chemistry so she takes it out and she looks at and shes it and its like shes entranced by this and she takes out. So she checks out what chemistry and she goes home and she takes her peacock fountain pen and copies it out. And like, from then on, shes going to be a and so i mean so the science i actually i became kind of like evangelical, their science, which was really fun because it was, was definitely a turnaround for me. Can i add one thing . Yes of course you had said something before that i forgot to address, which was that i thank you for bringing it up, which is the structure of lists in world and how we italics to identify robinsons own words. And its only relevant in terms of the research because so much of writing wasnt digitized and so we had to do the painstaking labor of going to the microfilm and you know, getting the words, you know, in a very cumbersome manner. But the reason why this is relevant is that if we knew we were writing book about a writer and we dont present words in her own words, it just seemed a very odd choice for two women writers to want to resurrect a womans life and then not give air to not give her words. Oxygen. And we also knew that if we spent so much time this under digitized columns and articles and essays and works of fiction and poetry we knew we had to make it easier for readers. Appreciate Elsie Robinson voice and so using italics to bring in so much of Elsie Robinson to tell her own story alongside us as the authors we that would make sense. And in so doing we created a database. This is just kind of inside baseball. We did some math and we did some numbers crunching. She produced about 9000 pieces of content. Her massive 30 year plus. So we created a database of all of this writing she also produced editorial cartoons. And so we then were able to create tags and keywords within our database. What Elsie Robinson was writing about, put dates to everything was a cartoon attached to each one. And so then, then we could search. What did she write . Marriage. What did she write about . Relationships. Capitalism, antisemitism, war racism, etc. , etc. So then we could have the first repository of Elsie Robinson own words to exist ever. Huge gift. Yeah. I thought about bringing props. Yeah, i was thinking about dusty typewriter or an ax. Is that what they would have used in the gold mine. Yeah. And then of course a tape measure that starts with the gold mine. So Elsie Robinson was in a disaster stress marriage that was loveless and cold and left wanting this richer life that she could not. This is relevant because in. 1912 she checked out of marriage, took her only son in tow, and they began 1912 to live as a single mother and child, which was exceptionally at the time. If you were divorced, you were branded. So many women kept mrs. Because of the shame to having not be attached to a at that time. This is to say that she was in dire straits when she finally got back to her beloved california. And between 1915 and 1918. Elsie worked as a miner in a massive gold in the mother lode of california. The only woman on a crew of men. This was danger and back breaking work that was exceptionally frightening she worked 600 feet below the surface of the earth where people died. And yet she had no way of scrounging for a living and did this with her son by her side as a duo who would go through life together and form incredible bond that shaped her not only her personal life, but even how she began her career when she finally left the mine, it closed down, which will wait for in 1918. That became the shift that gave her this opportunity to pursue her dream of becoming an artist and becoming a writer. But shed been writing. Shed been writing childrens stories and illustrating them and she found in this dusty town. Yes. So thank you for reminding me of this story. I appreciate that. This is hard. So my coauthor and i went back to juanitas california, which is where this gold mining town is. And we went back there and exploring Ocean Mission during the research this book and Elsie Robinson made an exceptional with the daughter of a former slave who was brought to california as a slave and became one of the most incredibly successful black gold miners in the entire history of the american west. That mans daughter and Elsie Robinson became fast friends when Elsie Robinson was trying become a writer. She knew that she couldnt do these manuscripts by hand. And what this woman gave her was an ancient old manual typewriter. And what we are pretty certain. 99 certain that in the old abandoned post office that we were allowed to have access to, we found that typewriter. And we know within 99. 9 certainty that it is the one because we with typewriter experts who can then tell us by the keys and the manufacturer when it was produced where in the country it would have been utilize. And