Inspired by Woolf: A Conversation

Summary

AF: Thank you so much for coming to our final panel, “Inspired by Woolf”…. I'm just going to briefly introduce our host Katherine Lanpher, so you know why it is that she's here. … I first met Katherine on a night that left many traces on this conference: a benefit for Girls Write Now, which began with a brief, brief paired reading at Bluestockings, and moved on to readings for grown-ups, cocktails, and burlesque dancing at The Slipper Room. (I can assure you I failed to incorporate burlesque dancing in this Conference.) But you can hear Katherine online at Time magazine, where she hosts the Time Financial Tool-Kit Podcast, and also at Barnes and Noble.com, that's bn.com, as you know, where she hosts Upstairs At the Square—a fantastic live show with authors and musicians taped at the flagship Barnes & Noble in Union Square. She is a substitute host for The Takeaway, a new National Public Radio show that is a collaboration of WNYC, the BBC, and the New York Times. And she is a contributing editor for More magazine. If you open up this month's issue, you'll see her travel piece on tracking jaguars in Belize, and she tells me that in her suitcase with her was a Rebecca Solnit book, so it's all coming together. She's also the author of a wonderful memoir, about her move from St. Paul to New York, called Leap Days. I'm very proud also to call her my friend, and delighted to introduce you to her as your host tonight. Thank you.

KL: You're very kind. I am so conscious that I am all that's standing between you and cocktails, but I also know that we have an incredible panel, and I have been looking forward to this very much. Rebecca Solnit, at the keynote yesterday, talked about the fact that there are many, many, many “Woolfs,” and that hers, in particular, had been a Virgil … Well, we have three different incarnations, if you will, of Virginia Woolf up here today. We have Susan Sellers, a scholar and novelist. We have Kris Lundberg, an actress who has founded a theatre company.