An Evening with Mark Oppenheimer on Judy Blume: A Life

Presented in Partnership with Books & Books

Meet us at The Hub to celebrate Judy Blume: A Life, the highly-anticipated biography of one of the world’s most beloved literary voices, with journalist Mark Oppenheimer.

To know the name Judy Blume is to know and love literature. Her influential novels turned classics—including Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great; Forever…; and Summer Sisters—touched the lives of tens of millions of adults and children. For fifty-five years her work has done something revolutionary: rewired the world’s expectation of what literature for young people can be—frank, candid, earthy, and unafraid to show the messier sides of humanity. But too little has been known about the real woman behind the iconic persona, and the unlikely journey of her literary ascension, until now.

Seasoned journalist and lifelong Blume fan Mark Oppenheimer is uniquely positioned to tell this story. He had complete access to unpublished writings, private papers, and 100+ interviews with Blume, along with her friends and associates, while writing Judy Blume: A Life. The result is a revealing, captivating, often surprising portrait of this beloved author.

In Judy Blume: A Life, Oppenheimer pens a beautiful, multidimensional portrait and goes deep, exploring Blume’s middle-class upbringing in the shadow of World War II and the cultural shifts she lived through; her complicated childhood; her family’s Jewish heritage, varied relationships and marriages; her unabashed sexual experiences; her bouts of heartache and loss; and her enduring legacy as a champion of free speech and contemporary literature in an age of book-banning. This biography recognizes how Blume’s life experiences, including her childhood in New Jersey and Miami Beach, her father’s sudden death, her early marriage, her short, misbegotten second marriage, and her divorces echo through her novels, mirroring themes in such classics as Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and Wifey.

While a close-up portrait of Blume the author, daughter, wife, and mother, Oppenheimer’s biography of Blume tells more than just her story alone. It portrays how her life was affected by the women’s movement, reproductive rights, the rise of divorce, and book banning, and it shows how her activism carries through to the present day.

Note: Judy Blume will not be present.

About the Author:

Mark Oppenheimer holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale, and he has taught religion and English at Stanford, Wesleyan, Wellesley, NYU, Boston College, Yale, and Washington University in St. Louis, where he is currently professor of practice. From 2010 to 2016, he wrote the “Beliefs” column for The New York Times, and he has written for The New Yorker, The Nation, and many other magazines. His audio work includes This American Life, Snap Judgment, and the eight-part Gatecrashers, about the history of Jews and antisemitism at Ivy League schools, which he created and hosted. In addition to Judy Blume: A Life, he is the author of four other books, including Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, four daughters, one son, and two dogs.

Tickets: $36 General Admission & 1 signed copy of Judy Blume: A Life;

$10 General Admission (no book)