RESCHEDULED FOR FEBRUARY 17TH

Come celebrate the (belated) 148th birthday of noted Pittsburgh-born writer Gertrude Stein, with a presentation by another Pittsburgh native, Kathleen Dixon Donnelly.

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**This event will be streamed on Zoom if you are unable to attend in person. A link will be sent out to registrants' emails two hours before the event begins**

Stein, born in what was then Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on February 3, 1874, is recognized as one of the leading modernist writers of the early 20th century. Her family lived at 850 Beech Avenue and owned a store on Wood Street in downtown Pittsburgh. In addition to becoming known for her own writings, Stein hosted a legendary salon in the years she lived in Paris, from 1903 to her death in 1946.

Purchase Volume 1 of "Such Friends": The Literary 1920s now

Kathleen Dixon Donnelly’s research for her Ph.D. in Communications from Dublin City University in Ireland focused on early 20th century writers socializing in groups—or salons—just before and just after World War I. Her title, “Such Friends” is taken from a poem by Irish writer William Butler Yeats, “…and say my glory was I had such friends.”

“The groups of writers I studied certainly were ‘such friends,’” says Dr. Donnelly. “Gertrude particularly, with her partner Alice B. Toklas, ran a legendary salon on the Left Bank of Paris, welcoming painters like Picasso and Matisse before the Great War, and writers such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald during the literary 1920s.

“Although the Stein family moved to San Francisco when Gertrude was only six months old, Pittsburgh likes to claim her as one of our most successful natives,” says Dr. Donnelly. “There is a lovely plaque on her family house on the North Side.”

Dr. Donnelly has given many presentations about early 20 th century writers in the Osher Lifelong Learning programs at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s.