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Stissing Center launches Writers & Readers — a new literary series bringing authors and readers together for lively discussion, storytelling, and a real glimpse into the creative process, all in an intimate and welcoming setting. Presented in partnership with Oblong Books and the Pine Plains Free Library.
Our first event: John Searles in conversation with Jane L. Rosen about his new novel, Single Girls.
It's 1965. Helen Gurley Brown is riding the wave of Sex and the Single Girl and has three issues to turn around a flailing magazine called Cosmopolitan. She assembles a team of brilliant women whose lives quickly become the stuff of coverlines — a doomed romance with a man no one knew was married, a champagne-glass hot tub that goes spectacularly wrong, a Joan Crawford clash that leads somewhere no one expected. Searles weaves Helen's legendary tenure with the moments that shaped her, capturing an era of ambition and reinvention when a single woman, fearless enough, could rewrite the rules entirely.
No one is better positioned to tell this story. John served as Cosmopolitan's books editor for 23 years — hired by Helen herself — and rose to executive editor and brand director. He's also the bestselling author of Boy Still Missing, Strange but True, Help for the Haunted, and Her Last Affair, praised by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, and Publishers Weekly, and winner of the American Library Association's Alex Award. Strange but True was adapted for film by the producers of La La Land, starring Amy Ryan, Greg Kinnear, and Margaret Qualley.
His conversation partner is Jane L. Rosen, author of six beloved novels including Nine Women, One Dress, On Fire Island, and Songs of Summer — a New York Times contributor, screenwriter, and one of fiction's warmest, sharpest voices.
In 1965, Helen Gurley Brown had three issues to save a failing Cosmopolitan — and the brilliant women she assembled promptly made their own lives the stuff of coverlines. Searles conjures an era when a fearless single woman could rewrite the rules entirely.
In The Grace Note
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