Kate Culkin in Conversation with Megan Marshall: The Art of Biography and Emerson’s Daughters

What does it mean to write the story of women whose lives were lived in relation—to each other, to their families, and to their cultural moment? Historian Kate Culkin takes up this challenge in her new book Emerson’s Daughters, the first full-length biography of Ellen Tucker Emerson and Edith Emerson Forbes, daughters of Ralph Waldo and Lidian Jackson Emerson. Drawing on the sisters’ extensive correspondence, Culkin reveals a lifelong partnership that shaped the Emerson family legacy and illuminates women’s contributions to American intellectual and cultural life.

Culkin will discuss the making of this biography with Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Megan Marshall, herself renowned for life stories of remarkable women including the Peabody sisters, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Bishop. Their conversation will explore the choices and discoveries involved in writing biography, the ways women’s lives often form constellations rather than stand-alone narratives, and the possibilities of the genre itself.