The East Hampton Library presented their 20th Annual Authors Night fundraiser. This is one of the most popular and celebrity-studded events of the Hamptons’ summer calendar. I told about the celebrity authors and the physicians and healers, the political authors and Architects, Art, Music, Fashion and Film and today Explorers, JFK Jr and The Movers.
On any given day, more people will be “wearing” Stan Herman than any other American fashion designer. As he continues to work and thrive in his 95th year, Herman is the most acclaimed uniform designer of our time. But that is just part of a life well-lived, and well-loved. In Uncross Your Legs: A Life in Fashion, Herman reflects on a remarkable life and career, from his childhood in Brooklyn, NY and Passaic, NJ, to WWII Army service in Europe, and back to NYC as a young freelance designer in the fashion hothouse of the Garment District. Next up, 16 years as head of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, where he was instrumental in bringing New York Fashion Week to Bryant Park – all the while continuing his thriving uniform and leisurewear design business. It’s also a deeply moving and insightful memoir, following personal triumphs and tragedies, including his nearly 40 year relationship with novelist Gene Horowitz, who suffered a heart attack and passed away in 1992. Together they lived their lives in the shadow of the AIDS crisis that decimated their personal and professional worlds. They also shared a beloved poodle named “Mozart,” who helped fill the void when Herman found himself suddenly alone. With equal aplomb, Herman writes with good humor and compassion, recalling the cruel and casual racism he witnessed in the military, his focus on animal rights in the fashion industry – as well as encountering the indignities of one’s aging anatomy. Learn the story behind the man whose vision, over 60 years, has dramatically helped forge and transform American style.
Christy Cashman is a mother, author, and an active member of the Boston literary community. She is on the board of directors for the Associates of the Boston Public Library and is the founder of YouthINK, a not-for-profit mentorship program for young artists in the United States and in Ireland. In addition to The Truth About Horses, she has published two children’s books, The Not-So-Average Monkey of Kilkea Castle and Petri’s Next Things. Christy, her husband, their two sons, and three dogs live in Boston and spend time in Ireland and on Cape Cod. She is currently working on her second novel, Beulah, and on her third children’s book, The Cat Named Peanut Shrimp Cookie Fry Muffin Who Lives on Staniel Key.
Michael Cecchi-Azzolina has been threatened, cursed at, punched and called every ugly name imaginable. He’s also had hundreds of dollars pressed into his hand. That’s because for years he controlled a very valuable commodity: a table at a high-end Manhattan restaurant. Cecchi-Azzolina has worked as maître d’ in several of New York’s hottest restaurants, where he’s encountered celebrities, captains of finance, plenty of nice, regular folks — and one bonafide mobster who repeatedly threatened him for a perceived slight. In a new book, Your Table Is Ready, Cecchi-Azzolina takes readers behind the scenes of the restaurant world, where we learn not just who gets choice tables and who doesn’t, but how restaurant staff in the 1980s and ’90s worked, fought and loved in an adrenaline-fueled workplace where booze and cocaine were plentiful. He is the proprietor of Cecchi’s, Modern Bar and Grill.
RoseMarie Terenzio is a New York Times bestselling author of Fairy Tale Interrupted and the former executive assistant to John F. Kennedy Jr. She served as JFK Jr.’s chief of staff at George magazine and oversaw his public relations and philanthropic causes until his death in 1999. Terenzio is the executive producer of Paramount Network’s I Am JFK, Jr. She is from New York City, where she lives and works as a strategic communications professional.
Liz McNeil is an editor-at-large at People, where she has worked for the last thirty years. She was the executive producer of the Discovery+ documentary Rebuilding Hope: The Children of 9/11 and the writer and executive producer of People’s podcast Cover-Up. She lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
Their book is JFK Jr. An Intimate Oral Biography the first oral biography of John F. Kennedy Jr. is an extraordinarily intimate, comprehensive look at the real man behind the myth. Sharing never-before-told stories and insights, his closest friends, confidantes, lovers, classmates, teachers, and colleagues paint a vivid portrait of one of the most beloved figures of the 20th century, revealing how the boy who saluted became the man America came to know and love.
Elizabeth Beller is a writer and journalist specializing in culture, art, and travel with more than fifteen years of experience as a book and story editor. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Vogue, and Travel + Leisure, among other outlets. Before turning to writing and editing, she spent two years as a script reader for Miramax, followed by twelve years in the art world at Sotheby’s Auction House.Her book is Once Upon a Time The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy
Patsy Tarr has been a dance enthusiast for most of her life. She founded the 2wice Arts Foundation in 1983 to support dance through the publication of two award winning magazines, Dance Ink and 2wice. Operation Match: Jeff Tarr and the Invention of Computer Dating is the inaugural book of her new venture, 2wice Books. The improbable and untold story of the college student who invented the world’s first computer dating service
Tom Clavin is a bestselling author of 25 nonfiction books on American and military history, sports, and entertainment. His writing career began in journalism, as a roving reporter for The New York Times for 15 years as well as a contributor to national magazines including Smithsonian, Men’s Journal, Parade, Reader’s Digest, and Sports Illustrated. Along the way, he was awarded numerous prizes by the Society of Professional Journalists and National Newspaper Association. The explosive true saga of the legendary adventurer Jedediah Smith and the Mountain Men who explored the American frontier, is the setting of Throne of Grace, and the guide to this epic narrative is arguably America’s greatest yet most unsung pathfinder, Jedediah Smith. His explorations into the forested frontiers on both sides of the Rocky Mountains and all the way to the West Coast would become the stuff of legend. Thanks to painstaking research and riveting writing, the story of the making of modern America is told through the eyes of both the ordinary and memorable men and women, settlers and Indigenous, who witnessed it. But it’s Smith who drives the narrative with his trailblazing path through the unexplored terrain of the American West.
Douglas Brunt has written several books. His latest book is The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel. He has also published Trophy Son, The Means, and Ghosts of Manhattan. He is also the host of the popular podcast Dedicated With Doug Brunt.
