A Left-Handed Woman: Essays
with author Judith Thurman in conversation with writer Julia Flynn Siler

This event will be held on Zoom.

A Left-Handed Woman, Judith Thurman’s first book in 15 years, gathers many of her most beloved essays and profiles from The New Yorker, ranging across a variety of topics - from fashion, literature, and music, to history, gender, and art (though it may be said that Thurman’s primary subject is the human condition itself). Featuring an excellent new introduction by Thurman reflecting on this body of work, A Left-Handed Woman is a defining collection from one of our most perceptive observers. Its essays and profiles consider our culture in all its guises: literature, history, politics, gender, fashion, and art, though their paramount subject is the human condition.

One of the preeminent essayists of our time, Judith Thurman is “a master of vivisection,” as Kathryn Harrison wrote in The New York Times. “When she’s done with a subject, it’s still living, mystery intact.”

Judith Thurman is the author of Cleopatra’s Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire; Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, winner of the National Book Award for Autobiography/Biography; and Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette. A staff writer at The New Yorker, she lives in New York City.

Julia Flynn Siler is a New York Times best-selling author and journalist. Her most recent book, The White Devil's Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown (Knopf, 2019) was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a nonfiction finalist for the California Book Award. Her other books are The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, a finalist for a James Beard Award and a Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished reporting, and Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure. www.juliaflynnsiler.com

Mechanics Institute Members FREE

Public sliding scale, $5 to $10