Boston Athenaeum Presents:
“Margaret Fuller and her Boston Conversations”

 Wednesday, December 8, 2010, 12:00 P.M.

Boston, MA, November 9, 2010 – Megan Marshall will present “‘My Own Path Leads a Different Course’: Margaret Fuller and her Boston Conversations,’”  on Wednesday, December 8th at noon at the Boston Athenaeum, 10 ½ Beacon Street in Boston.  Marshall is Assistant Professor at Emerson College, where she teaches narrative nonfiction writing and the art of archival research in the MFA program.  She is the author of The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, winner of the Francis Parkman Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography.  She is currently at work on a biographical study of Margaret Fuller, The Passion of Margaret Fuller: A Biographical Romance to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 

“Margaret Fuller was America's first female public intellectual, the Susan Sontag or Mary McCarthy of her time,” says Marshall.  “But Fuller was more than a cultural critic and opinion maker; she took an active part in what she called the 'era of experiment.'  Her Conversations for women in Boston, which took place just a few blocks from the Athenaeum, were the beginning of a crucial decade that culminated with Fuller's involvement in the Roman revolution of 1848-9.  What were the Conversations like?  How did Fuller arrive at this point of radical commitment?  Our conversation on December 8 will, like Fuller's, ask the 'great questions.'” 

 The program is supported by grants from Mass Humanities, the Fund for Unitarian Universalism, and individual donations.  The Conversation is co-sponsored by the Margaret Fuller Bicentennial Committee and the Boston Athenaeum and is part of a year-long series of events celebrating Fuller’s life and work.  It is free and open to the public. Donations will be gratefully accepted.