Edna Ferber, Her Best-selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film

Biographer Julie Gilbert with Victoria Wilson (Gilbert’s editor) and Foster Hirsch (cultural historian) discuss Gilbert’s Giant Love ("An extraordinarily illuminating account of the making of an essential literary and cinematic work and a vital portrait of brilliant, righteous, and gutsy Ferber.”—Booklist).  

In this fascinating conversation, Gilbert, Wilson and Hirsch explore up-close, Edna Ferber’s decade-long evolution that resulted in her generational saga about the Lone Star state, and about love, power, and the fight between land-loving cattle barons and newly rich oil tycoons.  Gilbertdiscusses Giant’s fraught, explosive publication that shook both the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and one of America’s largest publishers, and tells the story of the making of the Academy Award-winning epic film from director George Stevens that followed in the wake of Ferber’s best-selling novel.

 The fourth event in The Talk of the Town series of conversations with Victoria Wilson and Foster Hirsch at the Salmagundi Arts Club in New York City.