Women's Weekend 2023 Authors

Bone by Bone: A Memoir of Trauma and Healing

On May 12, 2015, Amtrak 188 derailed outside of Philadelphia going 106 miles per hour. Eight passengers were killed and many more severely injured. Geralyn Ritter was thrown from the train with such force that she sustained catastrophic injuries to her chest, her abdomen, and her pelvis. Found unconscious, unable to breathe, and suffering massive blood loss, she was not expected to survive. After enduring weeks in the ICU, dozens of surgeries over the following years, unremitting pain, PTSD, depression, and opioid dependence, Geralyn was faced with a daunting question: beyond mere survival after trauma, where is the path back to joy? Bone by Bone shares her powerful story of resilience. With humor, grace, and no-holds-barred honesty, she describes the journey back to life and offers support and encouragement for others. Bone by Bone addresses the long-lasting impact of sudden trauma and extends hope--from the perspective of someone who has been there. And back.

Biography

"After barely surviving a deadly train derailment in 2015 and enduring a long and agonizing recovery, Geralyn wrote her book entitled Bone by Bone: a memoir of trauma and healing, published in 2022. She is a frequent public speaker and author of multiple articles on trauma recovery, personal and professional resilience, corporate sustainability, women’s health, international trade policy, and other topics. She has pledged to donate the proceeds from her book to non-profit organizations that support trauma survivors and trauma medicine.

Geralyn serves of the Board of Directors of Business for Social Responsibility, a non-profit consulting firm, and Power to Decide, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing sexual and reproductive well-being. She is also a member of the Board of Visitors of the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy, where she chairs the Membership Committee. Geralyn also chairs the Patient-Family Advisory Committee of the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.

Geralyn and her husband Jonathan have been married for 25 years. They have three sons, one of whom is a recent Duke graduate. She is known for her distinctive laugh that fills a room and determined resilience in the face of personal and professional challenges.

A recognized expert in healthcare policy, Geralyn Ritter is currently executive vice-president at Organon & Co., a global company dedicated to women's health. At Organon, Geralyn leads the global public policy and government affairs, global communications, ESG and corporate responsibility functions. Prior to the launch of Organon in 2021, she was a longtime senior vice president of Merck & Co., Inc., one of the largest biopharmaceutical companies in the world. At Merck, her passion was leading the Company's engagement on public policy issues and supporting forward-thinking governance at the highest levels of the company. During her time at the company, she created and led a half billion-dollar initiative, Merck for Mothers, aimed at reducing maternal deaths during childbirth. Prior to joining Merck, Geralyn served as senior vice president for international affairs at PhRMA, as Trade Counsel at the law firm Covington & Burling, and in the U.S. government as associate general counsel for intellectual property in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Geralyn received her undergraduate degree from Duke University, her law degree from Stanford University, and her master’s degree in international economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "


Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality

"With the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly shaped the law: Constance Baker Motley” (CNN). The first major biography of one of our most influential judges—an activist lawyer who became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary—that provides an eye-opening account of the twin struggles for gender equality and civil rights in the 20th Century.

“A must-read for anyone who dares to believe that equal justice under the law is possible and is in search of a model for how to make it a reality.” —Anita Hill

Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hair dresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, the first of ten she would eventually argue. The only black woman member in the legal team at the NAACP’s Inc. Fund at the time, she defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham, helped to argue in Brown vs. The Board of Education, and played a critical role in vanquishing Jim Crow laws throughout the South. She was the first black woman elected to the state Senate in New York, the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President, and the first black woman appointed to the federal judiciary.
    
Civil Rights Queen captures the story of a remarkable American life, a figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country. Burnished with an extraordinary wealth of research, award-winning, esteemed Civil Rights and legal historian and dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Tomiko Brown-Nagin brings Motley to life in these pages. Brown-Nagin compels us to ponder some of our most timeless and urgent questions–how do the historically marginalized access the corridors of power? What is the price of the ticket? How does access to power shape individuals committed to social justice? In Civil Rights Queen, she dramatically fills out the picture of some of the most profound judicial and societal change made in twentieth-century America.

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Biography

"Tomiko Brown-Nagin is dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute, one of the world’s leading centers for interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, and professions. She is also the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School and a professor of history at Harvard University. 

An award-winning legal historian and an expert in constitutional law and education law and policy, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, and the American Philosophical Society; a fellow of the American Bar Foundation; a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians; and a member of the board of directors of ProPublica. Brown-Nagin has published articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics, including the Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence, civil rights law and history, the Affordable Care Act, and education reform. She is a contributing editor to POLITICO Magazine as well as a frequent lecturer and media commentator.

Brown-Nagin’s latest book, Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality (Pantheon, 2022), explores the life and times of the pathbreaking lawyer, politician, and judge. Her book Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press, 2011) won a 2012 Bancroft Prize in American History, among other honors.
 
In 2019, Brown-Nagin was appointed chair of the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, which is anchored at the Radcliffe Institute.  The Committee issued a landmark report detailing the University’s direct, financial, and intellectual ties to slavery, which resulted in Harvard’s commitment of $100 million to redress harms to descendant communities in the United States and in the Caribbean."


Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence

Freeing Jesus is a work of "memoir theology" and explores the many images of Jesus we encounter and embrace through a lifetime—and how we make theology from the text of our lives in conversation with scripture and tradition. Freeing Jesus invites us to liberate Jesus and free ourselves when it comes to the ever-compelling and yet often-elusive figure at the center of Christian faith.

Biography

Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is an award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality. She is the author of eleven books, bylines including The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, The Atlantic, USA Today, Huffington Post, Spirituality & Health, Reader's Digest, Christian Century, and Sojourners. She lives in Alexandria, VA. 


Here Be Dragons: A Parent's Guide to Rediscovering Purpose, Adventure, and the Unfathomable Joy of the Journey

Before our three kids, we were decent people. Interesting even. One of us taught Shakespeare to gang members while the other flew reconnaissance missions off North Korea. But our own children proved our biggest challenge. We spent so much time failing to be good parents that we forgot how to be good people.

Something had to change….

In HERE BE DRAGONS, Annmarie Kelly and Ken Harbaugh embark upon a journey to better balance their work and family lives. Filled with poignant moments and plenty of laughs, these adventures will resonate with anyone who’s ever tried to keep a family afloat.

Biography


It’s hard to give up on the feeling that the life you want is just out of reach. A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner. A promotion on the horizon. Everyone wants to believe that they are headed toward good, better, best. But what happens when the life you hoped for is put on hold indefinitely?

Kate Bowler believed that life was a series of unlimited choices, only to find that she was stuck in a cancerous body at age 35. In her instant New York Times bestselling book, No Cure for Being Human, Kate searches for a way forward as she mines the wisdom (and absurdity) of our modern “best life now” advice industry, which offers us exhausting positivity, trying to convince us that we can out-eat, out-learn and out-perform our humanness. With dry wit and unflinching honesty, she grapples with her cancer diagnosis, her ambition, and her faith and searches for some kind of peace with her limitations in a culture that says that anything is possible.

Biography

Kate Bowler, PhD is a three-time New York Times bestselling author, award-winning podcast host, and an Associate Professor of American Religious History at Duke University. She studies the cultural stories we tell ourselves about success, suffering, and whether (or not) we’re capable of change. She is the author of Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel and The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities. After being unexpectedly diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at age 35, she penned the New York Times bestselling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved), No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear) and her latest written with her co-producer, Jessica Richie, Good Enough: 40ish devotionals for a Life of Imperfection. Kate hosts the Everything Happens podcast where, in warm, insightful, often funny conversations, she talks with people like Malcolm Gladwell and Anne Lamott about what they’ve learned in difficult times. She lives in Durham, North Carolina with her family and continues to teach do-gooders at Duke Divinity School.


One Breath at a Time: A Skeptic's Guide to Christian Meditation

One Breath at a Time: A Skeptic’s Guide to Christian Meditation offers an accessible 40-day guide to beginning a Christian meditation practice. Trent reframes meditation for those who are skeptical because they doubt their ability to be still or they wonder whether meditation is a valid spiritual practice for Christians. She makes a strong case for Christian meditation from a biblical, historical, theological, and evidence-based perspective.

One Breath at a Time leads you step-by-step through five approaches:
• Breath meditation • Centering meditation
• Lectio divina meditation • Devotional meditation
• Loving-kindness meditation

Ever practical and encouraging, Trent gives you a variety of tools to begin and sustain a Christian meditation practice. Above all, she reminds you to be gentle with yourself, to embrace the beauty of being a beginner, and to keep practicing.

Biography

J. Dana Trent is a graduate of Duke Divinity School and professor of World Religions and Critical Thinking at Wake Tech Community College. An ordained Baptist minister and former hospital chaplain, her work has appeared on Time.com, Religion News Service, Sojourners, Religion Dispatches, and The Christian Century. She is also the award-winning author of One Breath At a Time: A Skeptic’s Guide to Christian Meditation, Dessert First: Preparing for Death While Savoring Life, For Sabbath’s Sake: Embracing Your Need for Rest, Worship, and Community, and Saffron Cross: The Unlikely Story of How a Christian Minister Married a Hindu Monk. 


Sobremesa: A Memoir of Food & Love in Thirteen Courses



In her coming-of-age adventure, Caminos Oría travels to her family’s homeland of Argentina in search of belonging—to family, to country, to a love, and ultimately, to oneself. Steeped in the lure of Latin culture, she pieces together her mom and abuela’s pasts, along with the nourishing dishes—delectably and spiritually—that formed their kitchen arsenal. But Caminos Oría’s travels from las pampas to the prairie aren't easy or conventional. She grapples with mystical encounters with the spirit world that lead her to discover a part of herself that, like sobremesa, had been lost in translation.

Just as she's ready to give up on love all together, Caminos Oría’s own heart surprises her by surrendering to a forbidden, with the Argentine man of her dreams. To stay together, she must make a difficult choice: return to the safe life she knows in the States or follow her heart and set a new table, one where she can be her full self, unapologetically, in full-fledged Spanglish.

Deliciously soulful and chock full of romance, this otherworldly, multigenerational story of a daughter's love and familial culinary legacy serves up, in 13 courses, a gastronomic meditation on the tables we set for ourselves throughout our lives—knowingly or not. It’s a story that lures us to slow down, to savor meals mindfully and see where the communion of food takes us, beyond the plate. It’s there we find our one true voice, look within, and face the questions we’ve been running from: Is this the table I envisioned for myself before the world told me who I am supposed to be? If not, reset it. Do I belong? Do the people around me lift me up? If not, change tables. Where am I seated? At the head? In the middle? There is no right or wrong answer, but does my chosen seat position me for the role I’m meant to fulfill in this lifetime? If not, change places.

Sobremesa invites us to savor the healing embrace of time-honored food and the wisdom it espouses. It’s a reminder that that home really is anywhere the heart is. And for all looking to find their place, it’s an invitation to claim your seat at sobremesa’s endless table, where everyone is welcome.

Biography

Josephine Caminos Oría was born in the city of La Plata, Argentina, and raised Stateside from infancy on in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Gathering around a table large enough to sit her family of eight, plus two for her abuelos on her mom’s side, food and the sobremesa that accompanied it, was how Josephine learned to make sense of the world. Stories of where she came from, and the people she’d left behind, were served to Josephine during family sobremesas she savored like meals. Those tales nourished Josephine’s imagination and sense of self, setting the table for Josephine’s second act—a family and professional life focused around Argentine food and culture. It was in her early 40s, with five young children in tow, that Josephine took a chance on herself, leaving a C-level career to make dulce de leche. Today, Josephine, along with her Argentine husband, Gastón, is the founder of La Dorita Cooks, an all-natural line of dulce de leche products and Pittsburgh’s first resource-based kitchen incubator for start-up and early stage food makers. In addition, Josephine is the author of the recently published, “Sobremesa: A Memoir of Food & Love in Thirteen Courses (Scribe Publishing, Co., May 2021) and the cookbook, “Dulce de Leche: Recipes, Stories, and Sweet Traditions” (Burgess Lea Press, February 2017). The Orías, along with their five children, Lucas, Mateo, Nico, Nacho and Poupée, golden retriever, Andino, and beagle, Avi (short for Avocado)—are currently living la vida low-country in Charleston, SC.

For more information about Josephine Caminos Oría, please visit www.LaDorita.net. She can be found on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.


Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World

Solutions for navigating an ever-changing social media world

Today’s students face a challenging paradox: the digital tools they need to complete their work are often the source of their biggest distractions. Students can quickly become overwhelmed trying to manage the daily confluence of online interactions with schoolwork, extracurricular activities, and family life. Written by noted author and educator Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness is the first book to successfully decode the new language of social media for parents and educators and provide pragmatic solutions to help students:

    Manage distractions
    Focus and prioritize
    Improve time-management
    Become more organized and boost productivity
    Decrease stress and build empathy

With fresh insights and a solutions-oriented perspective, this crucial guide will help parents, educators and students work together to promote healthy socialization, effective self-regulation, and overall safety and wellness. 

Biography

"Ana Homayoun is the founder of Silicon Valley-based Green Ivy Educational Consulting, an educational consulting firm that coaches students and early-career individuals with executive functioning skills, including organization, planning, and prioritization, and overall wellness.

She is the author of three acclaimed books: That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week, The Myth of the Perfect Girl, and, most recently, Social Media Wellness. She is also the founder and executive director of Luminaria Learning Solutions, a non-profit developing the Life Navigator School Program, an advisory program that provides students with needed skills for economic mobility, as well as social and emotional well-being. 

Learn more about her work at www.anahomayoun.com"


Stay Woke: A People's Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter

Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter is an essential guide to understanding how racism works and how racial inequality shapes American lives, ultimately offering a road-map for resistance for racial justice advocates and antiracists. Despite moments of “racial reckoning,” many of our political, social, and economic institutions are still embedded with racist policies and practices that devalue Black lives. Stay Woke directly addresses these stark injustices and builds on the lessons of racial inequality and intersectionality the contemporary movement for Black lives has challenged its fellow citizens to learn.

In this essential primer, Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith inspire readers to address the pressing issues of racial inequality, and provide a basic toolkit that will equip readers to become knowledgeable participants in public debate, activism, and politics.

This book offers a clear vision of a racially just society, and shows just how far we still need to go to achieve this reality. From activists to students to the average citizen, Stay Woke empowers all readers to work toward a better future for black Americans.

Biography

Candis Watts Smith is Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University, where she also received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. Professor Smith's expertise highlights the role race, racism, and structural inequality play in shaping the American political landscape. Smith is the author of dozens of articles as well as three books--Black Mosaic: The Politics of Black Pan-Ethnic Identity (2014); Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making Black Lives Matter (2019); and Racial Stasis: The Millennial Generation and the Stagnation of Racial Attitudes in American Politics (2020). Smith has translated her research for wider audiences, such as writing for the Washington Post, recording an Audible Original on the History of Politics & Race in American, and presenting a TED talk on three myths about racism that has been viewed over 2 million times. She is the Faculty in Residence in Southgate and the Faculty Director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, a program designed to diversify the pipeline in humanities and social sciences graduate programs. 


The Antiracism Handbook: Practical Tools to Shift Your Mindset and Uproot Racism in Your Life and Community

"Racism has reached epidemic levels in our country, and every single day we see acts of racial injustice. From police brutality and the prison industrial complex, to crumbling infrastructure and toxic drinking water in predominantly Black neighborhoods—many people have finally opened their eyes to the harsh realities of inequality and systemic racism in America. But awareness isn’t enough. We need to take action to create real change.

Written by two psychologists and experts in race, identity, equity, and inclusion, The Antiracism Handbook will empower you to make your own personal contribution to creating an antiracist society. You’ll find practical, evidence-based tools grounded in psychology to help you recognize and resist racial stereotypes in day-to-day interactions; and strategies to help you communicate with family, loved ones, and children about race and racism. You’ll also learn skills to help you navigate race in professional workspaces, and advocate for antiracist politics, policies, and practices in your community, civic, and spiritual life.

By shifting your thought patterns and behaviors to cultivate an antiracist mindset, you can actively change your community—and the world—beginning with yourself. This handbook will help you get started now."

Biography

Dr. Thema Bryant is the president-elect of the American Psychological Association, the leading scientific and professional organization.  She is the co-author of the Antiracism Handbook and author of Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole Authentic Self. 

Dr. Thema Bryant completed her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Duke University and her post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical Center’s Victims of Violence Program. Upon graduating, she became the Coordinator of the Princeton University SHARE Program, which provides intervention and prevention programming to combat sexual assault, sexual harassment, and harassment based on sexual orientation. She is currently a tenured professor of psychology in the Graduate School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine University, where she directs the Culture and Trauma Research Laboratory. Her clinical and research interests center on interpersonal trauma and the societal trauma of oppression. She is a past president of the Society for the Psychology of Women and a past APA representative to the United Nations. Dr. Thema also served on the APA Committee on International Relations in Psychology and the Committee on Women in Psychology


The Antiracism Handbook: Practical Tools to Shift Your Mindset and Uproot Racism in Your Life and Community

Racism has reached epidemic levels in our country, and every single day we see acts of racial injustice. From police brutality and the prison industrial complex, to crumbling infrastructure and toxic drinking water in predominantly Black neighborhoods—many people have finally opened their eyes to the harsh realities of inequality and systemic racism in America. But awareness isn’t enough. We need to take action to create real change.

Written by two psychologists and experts in race, identity, equity, and inclusion, The Antiracism Handbook will empower you to make your own personal contribution to creating an antiracist society. You’ll find practical, evidence-based tools grounded in psychology to help you recognize and resist racial stereotypes in day-to-day interactions; and strategies to help you communicate with family, loved ones, and children about race and racism. You’ll also learn skills to help you navigate race in professional workspaces, and advocate for antiracist politics, policies, and practices in your community, civic, and spiritual life.

By shifting your thought patterns and behaviors to cultivate an antiracist mindset, you can actively change your community—and the world—beginning with yourself. This handbook will help you get started now.

Biography

Dr. Edith G. Arrington is a licensed psychologist whose research, writing, and consulting focus on race, identity, development, and education; equity, diversity, and inclusion; and promoting health and well-being for individuals and communities. She has provided a range of professional services, including evaluation, assessment, and strategic planning to schools, families, community-based organizations, and philanthropic organizations.  Dr. Arrington earned her undergraduate degree in psychology and sociology from Duke University; her master's degree in clinical/community psychology from the University of Virginia; and her doctorate in school, community, and clinical child psychology from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.


The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey

The Gaza Kitchen is a richly illustrated cookbook that explores the distinctive cuisine of the area known prior to 1948 as the Gaza District—and that of the many refugees who came to Gaza in 1948 and have been forced to stay there ever since. In summer 2010, Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt traveled throughout the Gaza Strip to collect the recipes and shoot the stunning photographs presented in the book.

The Gaza Kitchen's 130 recipes codify this little-known part of the Middle Eastern culinary canon for the first time ever-- in any language. But this is not just a cookbook. In its pages, women and men from Gaza tell their stories as they relate to cooking, farming, and the food economy: personal stories, family stories, and descriptions of the broader social and economic system in which they live.

Biography

Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian-American journalist, author, and policy consultant. She frequently lectures on and writes about the situation in Gaza and the intersection of food and politics and more broadly on the issue of Palestine.  She is the co-author of the critically acclaimed book The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey, and has has been published extensively.  Through her work as a writer and documentarian she provides much-needed insight into the human experience of the region.  In 2014, she featured in the CNN program Parts Unknown with celebrity chef and gastronome Anthony Bourdain as his guide in the Gaza Strip.   From 2003-2007, El-Haddad was the Gaza correspondent for the Al Jazeera English website and co-directed two documentaries, including the award-winning Tunnel Trade.  A graduate of Duke University and the Harvard Kennedy School, she currently lives in Clarksville, Maryland with her husband, their four children and their 5 chickens.


Launches and transitions can be hard.  And any launch is a deviation from the status quo.  Whether we are exploring a new idea, new career, or new business, we encounter self-doubt, fear of failure, and risks, gives you stories and exercises so you can be prepared to launch through uncertainty and succeed. Narrated by Sanyin with her signature authenticity and vulnerability, and incorporating wisdom from corporate, sports, and the startup leaders, this audiobook makes your new project or chapter in your life feel achievable.  

Biography

Sanyin’s mission in life is to enable greatness in others. She is the founding executive director of Duke University’s Fuqua/Coach K Leadership & Ethics Center, a professor with Pratt School of Engineering and a Faculty Fellow with its Divinity School. She was recognized by Thinkers50 (the premier global ranking of management thinkers) in 2019 as the World’s #1 Executive Coach & Mentor. In 2021, Thinkers50 named her as one of the 50 most influential thought-leaders in the world.

An Influencer with more than 1 million LinkedIn followers, she was recognized on LinkedIn’s Top Global Influencer Voices (2017, 2018) Her insights have been featured in New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, HBR, Economic Times of India, Maria Shriver’s The Sunday Paper, and The Wall Street Journal. Sanyin pens The Last Word Column in Dialogue Review, and the Ask Sanyin column for MIT Sloan Management Review. She authored The Launch Book: Motivational Stories for Launching Your Idea, Business, or Next Career which inspires readers through stories of different leaders and gives them an action plan for leveraging change using behavioral science principles Her biweekly substack newsletter - Leadership Playbook: Unleashing Your Superpowers, helps readers discover their innate and instinctive strengths and build super teams.

She helps CEOs, friends, students, mentees and teams discover and use their superpowers to make the biggest difference. She is also a mom of 3 and married to the love of her life, Chad Miller (Duke Medicine ’99).