thank you again for coming up. thank you medgar evers college, and we hope to join you again on another evening. and thank you to c-span for taking the time to come out and film those. thank you so much. [applause] >> you're all invited to join us -- >> i've got to read my own book. [inaudible conversations] >> c-span to providing live coverage of the u.s. senate floor proceedings and key public policy events. every weekend booktv, now for 15 years the only television network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. c-span2, creed by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a public service by your local cable, tv or satellite provider. author and journalist gail sheehy discusses her forthcoming

memoir, "daring: my passages" next on booktv. >> longtime journalist gail sheehy, what was your first job in journalism? >> it was at the chronicle in rochester, new york. i was thrown in to be fashion editor. what i knew about fashion was not a lot of. shorts and t-shirts and playing tennis. but i learned fast. i had to file at the end of the day every day. it was so exciting. i just totally fell into it. >> when did you get into the kind of journalism that you have become known for? >> early actually because of new york magazine. the "herald" tribune which was

tom wolfe told me when i met him in the elevator when i got my first job. i was working in the women's department which i called the estrogen zone. is three hours away -- there were no women in journalism in the mid '60s. to speak of. and tom said, the "herald" tribune is the main tijuana bullring for freelance writers. you have to be brave. so i snuck down the back stairs so my editors wouldn't see me. crossed into the testosterone zone, went to clay's office to pitch in my best store. i would've been fired by editor had seen me. so clay with his huge booming voice said, come on in. where did you come from? i said the passage in his own.

he left. he said what he up for me? i told them the story in 30 seconds, about the ugly men who were having -- beautiful women to show their beach house on fire island so they could sit on the blanket and attract other beautiful girls. and he said did you go to this? i suggest. they didn't take me. he said right it just like you told me. new journalism. that was my big break. i started as a new journalist. and within a year play left the paper and started new york magazine on his own, and i was with him for his whole run. >> what was your relationship like? >> wonderful. it started as a was the older mentor, 12 years old. he was on fire as a new

journalist. he liked my writing and helped my career. and a weekend having a romance. both of us had been burned and we were not eager to think about anything permanent. plus in the '70s nobody was getting married. everybody was getting divorced or having all kinds of other arrangements. so it didn't even come up. so we would be together for a while and then there would be an explosion and we would not be together. and i was a divorced single mom for 15 years. so i enjoyed the bachelor girl's life, which was pretty exciting in the '70s and early '80s. and it was at the 1984, and clay actually took me to london and begin talking about the gate. what they? >> we can't have a too close to

christmas. giving my apartment is big enough? are you trying to tell me something? you know, go ahead, spit it out. i might say no. finally, they brought out the ring and said russia had always talked in headlines spent and you are married from what? >> eighty-four until 2008 when he died. >> gail sheehy, your new memoir, "daring: my passages." first of all, the daring, where did that come from? >> that's when i found when i finish the book and had to sit back and think what is the theme of my life, and the word bearing came to mind. it was taking chances. when i fear, i dare. and it started in my childhood. i actually was taught how to swim when i was three by my parents because we lived across from a harbor and they wanted me

to know how not to be fearful of water but in those days we did not helicopter parents. a lot of times parents just didn't, you just got on your bike saturday morning and he didn't care where you were and they showed up for dinner. when i was seven my grandmother gave me a typewriter, and i love typing on as i started typing stories, topping nancy drew books. by the time i was 10 i started sneaking into new york on the train from the suburbs and westchester to go to the top of grand central station and look down at the crossroads of a million private lives, which was a radio show by that name, and writing about it. so i dared to do that. what happened was i learned a lot about writing. and then i dared to cross into the testosterone zone to pitch a clay, who didn't know me from a hole in the wall. as i waited until i was notice

on the women's page for four or five years, you know, that whole period would have passed me by. all the way to the end of my life, daring is what allowed, after clay died, and the love of my life was gone, two years later i dared to love again. and that's part of the story that i have to go commune, you just keep getting up and putting one foot in front of the other and new doors will open. >> subtitle is passages. where does that come from? >> well, that comes from my best notebook, passages, which is really about the stages of adult life and that we continue to develop stages, not by type but by the times of turmoil and in decisions, this equilibrium we go through. when you have an opportunity for

growth. we all need to change from stage to stage. you can't stay in the same groove. you don't really grow. but it's uncomfortuncomfort able to go through a passage because what used to work doesn't quite work anymore. and what used to satisfy you, the job or relationship or the places you're living, or the fact that you're just making money but not doing any social good. those kinds of new urgencies come in. and what happened when the book came out was a lot of men, but really a lot of women, change their lives. they realized they didn't have to fit into this slot of the good wife, good mother. that there were other aspects of their lives that they need to put into play to feel full. so i get that comment so often i get the comic, i grew up with you. so when i did many of the, i'd four or five other passage books for men, new passages, silent

passages about menopause. and after writing passages in caregiving, which is about taking care of a loved one who is not going to return his independent person, and in my case it was 17 years of taking care of my husband with various bouts of cancer. i asked everybody else i know and thousand of people i don't know about their passages. maybe it's time to turn the lesson on myself. until he sat down to write a memoir. but i didn't know how. i realized that this is a whole different genre. it's not the same as writing journalism, nonfiction or big research books. and it's not fiction. it's about real people. so i studied with roger who teaches a wonderful course and memoir writing at stony brook southhampton. i studied with him twice and he taught me this is more like

writing a novel than anything else, except it's about real people and real events. and you are the character and many of the characters. you have two separate from yourself and righteous of as a character. >> was that tough? >> yes, but it was fascinating because it was a new way to express myself, learning something new, that always turns me on. >> you write in "daring" you were a late blooming problem drinker speak was a late blooming what? >> problem drinker. >> yes, i was. >> might surprise some people. >> yes. because the long years of taking care of my husband, not being able to work for it often, pulling back my social life at the beginning walking from the nursing home down columbus avenue and stopping in a sports bar and having two or three glasses of wine until i realized i was turning into the alcoholic

that my mother had been, and i was always afraid that could happen. and that led me into a 12 step program that is very, very valuable in life your life lessons. >> so you don't drink at all today? >> no. happily. >> gail sheehy, jill abramson i just don't know ho how to get io this question other than ascii, as some would have been a woman journalist for many years, what's your take on the jill abramson storied? >> i feel that there is definitely some sexism involved here. i don't think that -- i don't ever remember a high profile editor of great respect being marched off the premises and suddenly is denounced as who's been fired. that doesn't happen very often. it's usually for something, you

know, criminal or alcoholism, something like that. jill is said to have been mercurial. there have been make sure your editors before? my goodness. a previous editor of the times was pretty material. so i think that bill really made an effort to hire more women, to bring a different point of view to the editor. i think she was probably tough to work for. she is a tough journalist, but that's natural. it's very disturbing the way it happened and that it happened at all. >> was a tina brown tough to work for? >> not to me, no. i loved tina. i had a wonderful time working for. she started in handy for a 1984

and invited me to be her political correspondent. the great thing was she to do anything about american politics. she learned very quickly. so i was able to cover the presidential characters and write really long pieces that no longer can you write them anymore. we had a wonderful run. and then when she started the "daily beast" i was one of her first colonists and we had a wonderful time there. we got so comfortable with doing big pieces of big world leaders at "vanity fair," one time she called me up and said, i want you to do the pope. i said, tina, you are not even catholic. things are going a little bit beyond our fold. i said, do you know what i would rather do? menopause. i could see her eyes roll around

in her because she just delivered a baby. the last thing she was thinking about was the end of fertility, but being tina she right away recognized nobody ever said that were. i never even heard that were discussed. that was in 1991. she said go ahead, do it. >> you did not peace. did you ever do the pope? >> no. >> where was this picture taken on the front of your new book? >> that was taken in the first decent apartment i had a near. i had just recently been divorced, now single mom, and my late '20s. it was on the upper west side in a basement apartment. and my daughter, my three year old daughter's window looked out on the fire escape. >> quick preview of gail sheehy's new book, "daring: my passages - a memoir" coming up in the fall of 2014. you are watching booktv on

c-span2. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> coming up this morning on c-span2 on "the communicators." ..