Writer’s Talk: Jill Lepore

Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore discusses her forthcoming biography of Jane Franklin, Ben Franklin’s sister and confidante. Lepore is the David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History at Harvard College and chair of Harvard's History and Literature Program. She has been a contributor at The New Yorker since 2005. Lepore's previous books include The Mansion of Happiness: A History of Life and Death (Knopf, 2012); The Story of America: Essays on Origins (Princeton, 2012); The Whites of Their Eyes (Princeton, 2010), a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; and New York Burning (Knopf, 2005), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best non-fiction book on race, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, among others. A co-founder of the magazine Common-place, Lepore’s essays and reviews have also appeared in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, American Scholar, the Los Angeles Times the Washington Post, The Daily Beast, the Journal of American History, and American Quarterly. Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin will be published by Knopf this fall.

A reception follows.

Cosponsored by Ohio State’s Humanities Institute and the Department of History.