Examining America’s History Through Story with Ilyon Woo

Story in the Public Square

It’s been said that the history of an era is written in the countless acts of individuals, doing their best to live their own lives. Ilyon Woo shares the story of one married couple whose personal journey—literally and figuratively—charts the course of the United States in the dozen years before the American Civil Car.

Woo is the New York Times best-selling author of “Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom” and “The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother’s Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times.” Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and The New York Times, and she has received support for her research from the Whiting Foundation, and National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Antiquarian Society, among other institutions. She holds a bachelor’s degree in the Humanities from Yale College and a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University.

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