Category Archives: Uncategorized

I was never employee of the month at any of my many jobs, but I’m pleased to report that my new book, Attic Wife, was named a history book pick of the day by Damn History, a lively newsletter written … Continue reading →

Years ago, I wrote an article for the New York Observer about how Kirkus Reviews was known for its honest — sometimes brutally honest— appraisals of new books. I remember one award-winning mystery writer confiding that, after reading the Kirkus … Continue reading →

I was honored to be interviewed on WBAI FM in New York City, part of the Pacifica radio network, about my newest nonfiction book, Attic Wife: The Shocking Case of Agnes Young McAlpin. You can hear the interview here, beginning … Continue reading →

Usually I research other people’s families, not my own. However, doodling around one day, I discovered that my great-aunt Libby, born on Manhattan’s Delancey Street in 1898, was later stripped of her birthright citizenship for marrying an immigrant — the … Continue reading →

Exactly 126 years after Emma Gills’s remains were found in a Bridgeport, Connecticut, pond — mutilated in an attempt to conceal that she’d died after an illegal abortion — several events took me back to Connecticut to talk about that … Continue reading →

It was a rare and thought-provoking experience to be interviewed by Gabriella Kelly-Davies for her podcast Biographers in Conversation. Gabriella, an Australian, launched this effort earlier this year to explore the craft of biography and the choices biographers make. She … Continue reading →

I’m immensely grateful to biographer Carl Rollyson, who reviewed my latest book, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill: Abortion, Death, and Concealment in Victorian New England, for the New York Sun. Link: https://bit.ly/3ROuvtF Carl also featured me as his guest … Continue reading →

A few years ago, who could imagine that a daytime TV show would frankly discuss the subject of abortion? Yet that’s what happened in Hartford, CT, as the wildly popular “Great Day Connecticut” show produced by WFSV-Channel 3 invited me … Continue reading →

Smart and inquisitive audience members kept me on my toes as I presented slide talks based on my book, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill, in two New England cities where illegal abortion flourished in the 1880s and 1890s. On … Continue reading →

I was honored to be interviewed by Paul Bass on New Haven’s WNHH Dateline New Haven show. Decades ago, Paul and I worked together at an alternative news and culture weekly paper called the New Haven Advocate. Knowing his formidable … Continue reading →