Family Ties Panel at Massachusetts Historical Society (IN PERSON & VIRTUAL)
April 28 @ 5:00 pm - 6:15 pm
A’Lelia will join biographers Jeffrey Boutwell and Hester Kaplan — who also have written about family members — on a panel moderated by Pulitzer Prize winner Megan Marshall.
The event is hybrid and free of charge. An in-person reception will begin at 4:15 PM.
From the MHS website: This panel discussion brings together three American subjects from different eras and professions: George Boutwell, 19th century Massachusetts politician; A’Lelia Walker, Progressive Era business woman and arts patron; Justin Kaplan, prize-winning 20th century biographer of Twain and Whitman. What do their biographies have in common? Boutwell: Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy was written by a distant cousin; Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance by a great-granddaughter; and Twice Born: Finding My Father in the Margins of Biography by a daughter. How does the “necessary entwinement”—Hester Kaplan’s phrase for the binding of biographer to subject—alter, how does it feel, when the subject is a family member? Learn about three remarkable, impactful lives, and the writing lives of their biographer relatives.
