Author Elise Hooper and 2020 Scholarship Recipients
Liza Ewell September 14, 2020
Seattle welcomed our many guests and members to the second Zoom meeting of the 2020-2021 program series. We introduced our two scholarship recipients: Tybrenna Wilkins, studying for a BAS in dental hygiene at Seattle Central, and Anna Nguyen, studying public health and sociology at the University of Washington. The two awardees spoke of their college experiences and both indicated an interest in pursuing a Master’s Degree after graduation. Tybrenna’s dream is to establish a dental health education van that brings dental hygiene training to elementary schools and Anna has plans to help increase greater equity in access to healthcare.
We welcomed guest speaker and local author Elise Hooper, who spoke on her latest book, Fast Girls, and answered questions about writing and her research process. Elise writes about real women who have been overlooked in history and Fast Girls tells the story of three young women competing as runners in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
These women overcame incredible adversity, including racism and gender inequality, as they struggled to achieve their athletic goals. Elise also described her adventures as a writer, concluding that “you never know what’s going to happen as an author.” Elise is a very animated and interesting speaker and she generated plenty of questions from her audience.
Make sure to check out Elise’s two other novels: The Other Alcott (2017), the untold story of artist May Alcott, and Learning to See (2019), a historical novel about documentary photographer Dorothea Lange.