Book Festival of the MJCCA: Karen Essex & Lynn Cullen

The 35th Edition of the Book Festival of the MJCCA Presents Karen Essex & Lynn Cullen

In conversation with Jessica Handler, Bestselling Author and Educator

Author Talk, Q & A & Book Signing

KAREN ESSEX, Run, Darling: A Novel:  Before the Sexual Revolution, reality TV, and social media, there lived the Gabors, a family of beguiling glamour icons with a global following.

For decades, the gorgeous trio of Zsa Zsa, Eva, and Magda, with their Auntie Mame mother, dominated gossip columns, TV and movie screens, talk shows, and tabloids with their talent, clever quips, branded beauty products—and utter disregard for society’s rules.

While we many remember their whipped blonde hair, jewelry and gowns, multiple marriages, and the word, ‘dahlink,’ sprinkled like sugar into every sentence, few knew of this Jewish family’s shocking secrets, painful pasts, and harrowing journey from Nazi-dominated Europe to America and from obscurity to celebrity. Run, Darling is that untold story.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Karen Essex is a national and international bestselling author whose novels spotlight history’s most fascinating and powerful women—those who shaped empires, commanded art, and seduced the world. Also an award-winning journalist & screenwriter, Karen has written for Netflix, James Cameron and Fox Studios, Warner Bros, Sony, Paramount, and Fox TV.

LYNN CULLEN, When We Were Brilliant: A Novel: They were an unlikely pair—a blond bombshell and a photographer determined to be taken seriously—but Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold would make a deal that would change their lives in this dazzling new novel from the national bestselling author of Mrs. Poe and The Woman with the Cure.

In 1952, Norma Jeane Baker follows documentary photographer Eve Arnold into a powder room on the night they first meet. She has a proposition for her. Norma Jeane created Marilyn Monroe to be photographed, and she wants Eve to do it. Eve is better than anyone she’s seen at revealing a person’s inner truth. Together they can help each other. Together, she says, they can make something brilliant.

Skeptical of this cipher of a young woman, Eve demurs. She’s looking for more serious subjects than this ambitious starlet. But she keeps getting drawn back into Marilyn’s orbit, and the women come to recognize something in each other—something fundamental. Nothing will get in the way of what they want, and when Marilyn’s star takes off to teetering heights, neither will ever be the same.

A lavish and transporting novel, When We Were Brilliant captures the halcyon days of an icon and the grit of women determining their own futures as it explores the exceptional and complicated friendship between Marilyn Monroe and Eve Arnold.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lynn Cullen’s bestselling novels, including The Woman with the Cure, The Sisters of Summit Avenue, Mrs. Poe, Twain’s End, The Creation of Eve, and Reign of Madness, have been translated into seventeen languages and are the recipients of various honors, including NPR Great Read, Oprah.com Book of the Week, People magazine Book of the Week, Indie Next List selection, and Atlanta magazine Best Books of the Year. She lives in Atlanta.

Books will be available for purchase on the day of the event from our partner bookseller, A Cappella Books!

All sales are final. Tickets are non-refundable.