The Norman Williams Public Library and Yankee Bookshop are pleased to launch Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World, the third book by local author Julia Cooke.

Starry and Restless is a page-turning story of Rebecca West, Emily “Mickey” Hahn, and Martha Gellhorn, three reporters whose curiosity, grit, and ambition expanded the possibilities for women and meaningful work. The writer will discuss the ways these pioneering women changed how we see the world and the role of journalism with Jeff Sharlet, Professor of Creative Non-fiction at Dartmouth College and the author of numerous award-winning essays and books.

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West, Hahn, and Gellhorn reported from the Congo, the American South, Cuba, the lively salons of Shanghai, Yugoslavia on the brink of World War II, the shot-riddled streets of Spain, Hong Kong under Japanese occupation, Germany and Italy at war, post-Blitz London, McCarthy-era Mexico, and beyond. These women didn’t just bear witness to the great changes of the twentieth century; they didn’t just write the backstory to wars that roused their readers to support; they transformed the very world they were describing, and the way it was understood.

Each writer traversed the globe, searching for stories they would then dispatch to The New Yorker, The Times (London), The New York Times, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Collier’s, and Vogue. They often traveled alone, sometimes teaming up with other women reporters, sometimes with their husbands along for the ride. They sneaked onto the front lines when they were forbidden, and interviewed civilians to gather color and detail. They wrote novels to pay the bills and articles to explain the world to itself. Over the course of their intertwining lives, they became mothers and friends, and took joy in each other’s successes.

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Julia Cooke is the author of the books Come Fly the World, a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist and a Malala’s Book Club pick, and The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba, a collection of vignettes covering the daily lives of Cubans. Her reporting has been published in Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times, Playboy, The Village Voice, and more. Her essays have been published in Salon, The Threepenny Review, Smithsonian, Tin House, and Virginia Quarterly Review, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been anthologized in various iterations of Best American Essays and Best American Travel Writing among other publications.

Jeff Sharlet is the author or editor of eight books, most recently The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for Nonfiction, one of The New York Times 100 Books of the Year, and a New Republic book of the year. His other books include This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers, Sweet Heaven When I Die, C Street, The Family – (the basis for the 2019 Netflix documentary series), Killing the Buddha; and two edited volumes. He has received numerous awards and fellowships. Sharlet is an editor-at-large for VQR, and is or has been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Harper’s and Rolling Stone, and a contributor to publications including The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, and Mother Jones.