Wednesday, May 1, 2019 from 6pm to 9:30pm
The Birchwood Manor, Whippany, NJ (directions)
Seats are $250 each
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Laurie Lico Albanese, Award-winning Novelist, Memoirist, author of Stolen Beauty
Laurie is an award-winning novelist and memoirist whose historical fiction about women, art and self-discovery are widely praised. Her 2017 novel Stolen Beauty brings to life the struggles and intrigue behind painter Gustav Klimt’s famous golden portrait, “Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” which was created at the height of fin-de-siècle Vienna and stolen by the Nazis in 1938. The Wall Street Journal calls Stolen Beauty “a work of art itself,” and USA Today says it is a novel for these troubled political times. The Library Journal’s starred review called it “Compelling. Complex yet utterly readable…. those who enjoyed the film ‘Woman in Gold’ starring Helen Mirren won’t be able to put it down.” Laurie is also co-author of The Miracles of Prato – about the Renaissance painter Fra Filippo Lippi and the beautiful novitiate who modeled for his Madonna. Additionally, she authored a memoir in verse, Blue Suburbia. She’s written travel stories for the NY Times‘ Sunday Travel section, More magazine, and Narratively. The mother of two grown children, she lives with her husband and their dog, Athena, in Montclair, NJ.
Diane Herbst, Award-winning Journalist for People magazine
Diane is a regular and frequent correspondent for People magazine, contributor to many other publications (including The New York Post), media trainer, and book author. For as long as she can remember, she has loved learning and being where the action is, and her work satisfies those cravings, affording her the chance to cover many high-profile, national crime, political, human interest, medical, pet and breaking news stories. She has interviewed and hobnobbed with celebrities, been inside a secretive Amish puppy mill, and received a shocking phone call from Donald Trump. A lifelong photographer and once-passionate windsurfer who frequented Maui, Hawaii, Diane founded a short-lived but fun photography workshop on the island. During her undergraduate days at the University of Pennsylvania, she spent a semester learning oceanography in Woods Hole, Mass. and sailing on a schooner to Bermuda and Nova Scotia while doing research. She then attended Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, an experience that left her in love with the profession. When Diane is not consuming news, the Montclair resident can be found walking in the woods near her home with her large, cuddly rescue dog, Bear, watching movies, and hanging out with members of her large, extended family.
Lettie Teague, Wall Street Journal Wine Columnist
Lettie’s column “On Wine” is published every Saturday (except one) and she wrote the weekly column “Uncorking New York” for The Wall Street Journal’s “Greater New York” section until that section was discontinued (2017). In 2010, Lettie joined The Wall Street Journal and won the 2012 James Beard Award Food-Related Columns Award for her Wall Street Journal columns. Previously, she was the executive wine editor at Food & Wine magazine (1997- 2009) where she oversaw the magazine’s wine coverage and wrote the monthly column, “Wine Matters,” for which she received the James Beard Foundation’s M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award (2003) and the James Beard Award Best Magazine Columns award (2005). She was inducted into the Wine Media Hall of Fame in June 2015. Currently, Lettie is working on a guide to wine (as yet untitled) for Basic Books. Her previous books include Wine In Words: Some Notes for Better Drinking, published by Rizzoli in April 2015 and Educating Peter: How Anybody Can Become an (Almost) Instant Wine Expert published by Scribner’s in 2007. She was also the cartoonist and co-author of Fear of Wine: An Introductory Guide to the Grape, published by Bantam in 1995 and still in print.