In-Person: OVERLOOKED by Amy Padnani

Please join us in welcoming Amy Padnani to celebrate Overlooked: A Celebration of Remarkable, Underappreciated People Who Broke the Rules and Changed the World! For this event, Amy will be joined in conversation by Donna Seaman.

Please note: Pre-registration for this event is required. By pre-registering, you are verifying that you are fully vaccinated and will wear a mask throughout the entirety of the event.

An unforgettable collection of diverse, remarkable lives inspired by “Overlooked,” the groundbreaking New York Times series that publishes the obituaries of extraordinary people whose deaths went unreported in the newspaper—filled with nearly 200 full-color photos and new, never-before-published content

Since 1851, The New York Times has published thousands of obituaries—for heads of state, celebrities, scientists, and athletes. There’s even one for the person who invented the sock puppet. But, until recently, only a fraction of the Times’s obits chronicled the lives of women or people of color. The vast majority tell of the lives of men—mostly white men.

Started in 2018 as a series in the Obituary section, “Overlooked” has sought to rectify this, revisiting the Times’s 170-year history to celebrate people who were left out. It seeks to correct past mistakes, establish a new precedent for equitable coverage of lives lost, and refocus society’s lens on who is considered worthy of remembrance.

Now, in the first book connected to the trailblazing series, Overlooked shares 66 extraordinary stories of women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA figures, and people with disabilities who have broken rules and overcome obstacles. Some achieved a measure of fame in their lifetime but were surprisingly omitted from the paper, including Ida B. Wells, Sylvia Plath, Alan Turing, and Major Taylor. Others were lesser-known, but noteworthy nonetheless, such as Katherine McHale Slaughterback, a farmer who found fame as “Rattlesnake Kate”; Ángela Ruiz Robles, the inventor of an early e-reader; Terri Rogers, a transgender ventriloquist and magician; and Stella Young, a disabled comedian who rejected “inspiration porn.” These overlooked figures might have lived in different times, and had different experiences, but they were all ambitious and creative, and used their imaginations to invent, innovate, and change the world.

Featuring stunning photographs, exclusive content about the process of writing obituaries, and contributions by writers such as Veronica Chambers, Jon Pareles, Amanda Hess, and more, this visually arresting book compels us to revisit who and what we value as a society—and reminds us that some of our most important stories are hidden among the lives of those who have been overlooked.

BUY THE BOOK!

Amisha (Amy) Padnani is an award-winning senior staff editor on the Obituaries desk at The New York Times, where she created a series called Overlooked, which tells the stories of remarkable women and people of color whose deaths were never reported by the paper. She began the series after noticing that the Obits section was dominated by white men and sought ways to balance its coverage. Overlooked launched in 2018 with the stories of 15 women, and has since included people of color and subjects from the L.G.B.T.Q. and disability communities. A book, published in November, features 66 Overlooked obituaries, about two dozen of which have never appeared in The Times before. The project was also the inspiration for a musical production by The Waa-Mu Show at Northwestern University.

Donna Seaman is the Editor for the adult books section in Booklist, published by the American Library Association. A recipient of the Louis Shores Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing, the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award, Seaman is a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum, a frequent presenter at various literary events and programs, and an adjunct professor for Northwestern University’s MA in Writing and MFA in Prose and Poetry Programs. Seaman’s author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists. River of Books: A Reading Life is due out later this year.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.