Brookline Books/Lumen Editions

Conversations: Famous Women Speak Out 

She has a reputation for telling all, at least where her subjects are concerned: what they're wearing, what they're drinking, how far they've come since being found at a soda fountain on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. She has been dubbed a "psycho-journalist" for her ability to cut through celebrities' usual cheery veneer and get to the personal grit. In these interviews, Marian Christy's remarkable talent finds the motor and spark behind famous women's success: what propelled them into their orbit, what is behind their success, and what are the obstacles they had to overcome. This is a remarkably courageous, inspiring series of interviews of women discussing difficulties that are both timeless and common to women everywhere. 

Marian Christy is well known for her syndicated column "Conversations" that ran in the Boston Globe. The column delivered far more than a classic interview; Christy ventured into the emotional world of her subjects. Most impressive is Christy's talent for getting famous women to reveal their truest feelings, their emotions, their attitudes, their motivations—much in the same way a psychiatrist would. The resulting essays are unfailing human reflections of self, which in total, are reflections not only of the interviewee, but the people around us and the world in which we live. "I'm not interested in power," Christy says. "I'm interested in the pain behind the power. Pain is the oneness that connects us all." This is not a work of gossip but of human experience and womens' empowerment. 

Marian Christy, currently the Media Director of Special Collections at Boston University, is the recipient of thirty prestigious journalism awards during her twenty-six-year tenure as an editor and top Boston Globe syndicated columnist (1965-1991). Honored by Cosmopolitan magazine as one of America's top five journalists, she is the author of the critically acclaimed book Invasions of Privacy: Notes from a Celebrity Journalist (Addison-Wesley). As well as working as Fashion Editor for the Boston Globe for many years, Christy worked for the New York-based Fairchild Publications where she wrote features for Women's Wear Daily and was a syndicated columnist for the New York Times. She was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. 

Contents include: Ginger Rogers on pride • Maya Angelou on transcendence • Nien Cheng on endurance • Chita Rivera on attitude • Carol Channing on rejection • Alice Walker on heroines • Shelley Winters on independence • Agnes DeMille on possibilities • Helen Hayes on beauty • Vikki LaMotta on being battered • Yoko Ono on prejudice • Coretta Scott King on somebodiness • Tina Brown on being an extrovert/introvert • Bernadette Peters on being yourself • Julia Child on setting a good table • Claire Bloom on stretching • Carrie Fisher on being smart and funny • Jihan Sadat on widowhood • Suzanne Somers on alcoholism • Jane Pauley on priorities • Diana Vreeland on pizzazz • Liv Ullmann on coping with death • Ann Jillian on physical alterations • Jackie Collins on doing anything • Catherine Deneuve on being a mother • Nora Ephron on betrayal • Candice Bergen on living life to the fullest • Shirley MacLaine on spontaneity • Marlee Matlin on being deaf • Dyan Cannon on loving yourself • Lady Antonia Fraser on being a natural feminist • Francoise Gilot on obedience • Wendy Wasserstein on being a girl • Sally Field on pragmatism • Estee Lauder on extemporaneousness • Mary Higgins Clark on never giving up • and more.