Starry and Restless

Within the past generation, journalism has been upended by the Internet and social media — and it’s still undergoing extraordinary transformation. Join author Julia Cooke for a discussion about Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World, a triple-biography that illuminates an earlier moment of journalistic transformation.

Martha Gellhorn, Emily “Mickey” Hahn and Rebecca West were three trailblazing reporters who transformed journalism while reinventing the possibilities for women of their times. In Starry and Restless, Cooke takes readers on these writers’ adventures and challenges throughout the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, from Omaha Beach on D-Day to Japanese-occupied Shanghai through Cuba, the Congo and the Nuremberg Trials.

In their lifetimes, these three writers were “the targets of near-continuous criticism, scrutiny, gossip, and, occasionally, praise.” Now, their legacies are illuminated by their own writing and letters in this extraordinary, globe-trotting triple portrait.

PEM Curator Trevor Smith will moderate a discussion with the author.