Upcoming!
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September 2024 – Stay tuned for more details about an event in Hartford, CT! The organizers and I are working out details.
Past Events:
It was standing room only at my April 3 event at Kinsmen Brewing Company in the Milldale section of Southington, Conn. The Barnes Museum hosted 113 attendees despite the cold rain falling outside. I was honored to share the stage with Barnes curator Christina Volpe and local historian and preservationist Liz Campbell Kopec. Liz and Christina had been leading graveyard tours to Emma Gill’s burial site at Southington’s Oak Hill cemetery before I had even started my book.
On March 20, 2024, I presented a slideshow, “Illegal Abortion in New Haven in the 1890s, based on my book, The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill, at the New Haven (Connecticut )Free Public Library.
It was the perfect place to present. In 1897, Nancy Guilford (who performed “the criminal operation” at her gracious New Haven home) advertised her abortion services in the New Haven Free Public Library bulletin, using thinly veiled language that any schoolgirl of the era would have understood.
My presentation at the Lynn Museum/Lynn Arts focused on the “Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin” chapter in my book, when Henry and Nancy Guilford flourished in their practice. I particularly loved the audience’s reaction to a photo taken on Lynn’s Lewis Street, where the Guilfords’ practice flourished until a sensational case led to Nancy’s imprisonment and Henry’s banishment from the state. After Nancy’s release five years later, they resumed their practice in Connecticut—proof that criminalizing abortion doesn’t stop it.
On January 25, 2024, we celebrated the launch of The Disquieting Death of Emma Gill at P&T Knitwear bookstore & cafe, 180 Orchard St., New York, NY
May 2022 – The Brockway (PA) Historical Society Hosted an Author Talk on A Mighty Force
Author Marcia Biederman had the honor of speaking on May 18, 2022, to the Brockway (PA) Historical Society. Among the society’s members are a nephew and niece of Dr. Elizabeth Hayes, the subject of Biederman’s most recent book, A Mighty Force: Dr. Elizabeth Hayes and Her War for Public Health. In an hourlong talk and discussion, Biederman talked about Hayes’s brief time in the national spotlight. “Dr. Betty” has not been forgotten in Brockway, where her mother moved during the strike, and where Hayes briefly joined a local physician’s practice until marrying LeRoy Voris and moving to the Washington, D.C., area.
During the lively question-and-answer session, some attendees reported that they’d been delivered by Hayes, and one woman recalled Hayes’s advice to her about her colicky baby.
March 2022: Two In-Person Events in the Alleghenies, Where Dr. Betty Led a 1945 Miners’ Strike
Marcia Biederman was thrilled to mark Women’s History Month 2022 by speaking to two historical societies in north-central Pennsylvania, where Dr. Elizabeth Hayes led 350 coal miners in a successful 1945 strike for clean drinking water and decent living conditions.
On Saturday, March 19, Biederman was the guest speaker a standing-room-only luncheon hosted by the DuBois Area Historical Society. DuBois is the setting of many of the events recounted in A Mighty Force: Dr. Elizabeth Hayes and Her War for Public Health. “Dr. Betty” regularly admitted patients to a DuBois hospital, and the lawyer who represented the miners in the strike had his office there.
Then on Sunday, March 20, at 2:00 p.m., Biederman addressed another crowd at the Mt. Zion Historical Society at the social hall of St. Joseph’s church in Force. Once a company-owned town, where the Shawmut Mining Company had nearly total control — allowing sewage to flow through the streets —Force is now a normal rural community. In 1945, mining officials said Force wasn’t worth improvements because it was near the end of its shelf life. Dr. Hayes and the mining families who stood up for her have proved them wrong.
Virtual Event, Scan Artist, available anytime
Facebook Live talk on Scan Artist, Westport Museum for History & Culture
You’re invited to view and respond to Marcia Biederman’s author talk on SCAN ARTIST, sponsored by the Westport (CT) Museum for History & Culture at https://www.facebook.com/WestportHistory/videos/224237708891687/
The Westport Museum of History & Culture hosted Marcia Biederman in its Facebook Live author talk series on April 17, 2020. While stay-at-home policies related to Covid-19 prevented in-person events, the museum kept its community connected through this lively series. In the video, Marcia answers frequently asked questions about Evelyn Wood, her method, and the writing of the book.
Past In-Person Events
Nov. 21, 2019 – Author Marcia Biederman spoke about SCAN ARTIST as a panelist at a book fair sponsored by Senior Planet, a technology-oriented community center in Manhattan dedicated to “aging with attitude.” Video of the panel, which focused on memories and their role in writing, is at https://youtu.be/0EFHJJF-hjw
Nov. 19, 2019 (Tuesday) 6:30-7:30pm. Book-signing and slide talk on SCAN ARTIST at the Westport Museum for History and Culture, 25 Avery Place, Westport CT 06880 – (203) 222-1424. From the mid-1960s until the mid-1970s, Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics was a subsidiary of Famous Artists Schools, a learn-by-mail operation that was once Westport’s largest employer. The talk included a special focus on the Famous Artists years of the Evelyn Wood saga.
Sept. 26, 2019 (Thursday) Book-signing and talk on SCAN ARTIST at the Yale Bookstore, 77 Broadway, New Haven, CT, from 6-7 PM. A Yale student once sued an Evelyn Wood institute for failing to deliver on its promises. Talk tailored to this significant Connecticut event.
Sept. 11, 2019 (Wednesday) Book-signing and talk on SCAN ARTIST from 7-8:30 PM at the Harvard Coop, 1400 Mass Ave., Cambridge, MA. The first skeptic to raise questions about Evelyn Wood’s claims was a Harvard Business School staff member, and the Harvard Crimson wrote a series of scathing articles about the method.
Sept. 5, 2019 (Thursday) 7- 8 PM, Wine, cheese, and a spirited Q&A session enlivened the standing-room-only Book Launch of SCAN ARTIST: HOW EVELYN WOOD CONVINCED THE WORLD THAT SPEED-READING WORKED at Shakespeare & Co bookstore, 2020 Broadway, New York, NY.
July 27, 2019 Marcia Biederman presented a slideshow and author talk about her book Popovers and Candlelight at the Grinton I. Will Library 1500 Central Park Ave, Yonkers, NY 10710. Thanks to the Yonkers Historical Society for sponsoring making this event such a well-attended success. In the audience were no less than three former Westchester Candlelight popover girls. It was a thrill to present in Yonkers, where more than half the audience had dined at the Candlelight!
Jan. 2, 2019 – 6:30 pm, Marcia Biederman in conversation with Michael David Quinn presented a slide talk about her book Popovers and Candlelight to a packed and participatory audience at the New York Public Library’s Mid-Manhattan branch, 476 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
