Courting Kathleen Hannigan
Courting Kathleen Hannigan will be of special interest to women lawyers and law students, professional women, and women everywhere who are curious about the social history of women in law and the professions, law firm cultures, and the sexual politics of law firms. This is an insider’s view of how large law firms work, and what it was like to be among the first big wave of women in law firms—before maternity leaves, diversity programs, alternative work schedules and before the discovery of glass ceilings.
“her novel paints a very precise picture of a place and time, showing what it meant to be a woman breaking glass ceilings. How Hannigan decides to testify in Ann Rose’s case is worth the wait.”
- BOOKLIST
WARMING UP
Approaching forty, unemployed but well-off, talented but unknown, functional but depressed, former musical actress Cecilia Morrison reluctantly seeks therapy, but it takes a runaway teenager to change her life when he cons her out of sixty bucks. Although she once won leading roles, Cecilia now can’t bring herself to audition for parts, and her therapist, an amateur sculptor, can’t take the first swing at a hunk of marble his wife gave him before she died.
Whether at the apex of one’s success or just starting out, Warming Up speaks to everyone who’s every wondered, “what’s it all about?” or who finds themselves doing something they never thought they’d do, whether it’s singing in a subway to earn some “dough-re-me” or running out of an important audition, chased by a ghost. Reed offers a unique perspective on a homeless teen using his innate abilities as a con man to help his sister and her baby escape their damaged childhoods, and sympathizes with a perfectionist’s struggle to express himself creatively in a medium in which he is a mere amateur.
Warming Up was a short list finalist for the 2011 William Wisdom-William Faulkner Prize for the Novel.
About the Author
Ever since turning 40 a few years ago, Mary Hutchings Reed has been trying to become harder to introduce, and, at 62, she finds she’s been succeeding. Her conventional resume includes thirty four years of practicing law, first with Sidley & Austin and then with Winston & Strawn, two of the largest firms in Chicago. She was a partner at both in the advertising, trademark, copyright, entertainment
and sports law areas, and now is Of counsel to Winston, which gives her time to write, do community service and pursue hobbies such as golf, sailing, tennis and bridge.
Mary was raised in Crystal Lake, Illinois, then a small town forty five miles from Chicago. Her mother was a librarian and her father a PhD in chemical engineering, and that should explain everything. She has one sister, Donna C. Steele, born eleven months and two weeks after her, who skipped first grade so that the “Hutchings girls” were very much like twins—Donna the creative one (the Founder and Artistic Director of Steel Beam Theatre, St. Charles, IL) and Mary the logical one, and that should explain the rest of it!
Mary also believes in community service, and for many years has served on the boards of various nonprofit organizations, including American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago, Off the Street Club and the Chicago Bar Foundation. She currently serves on the board of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago (and chair of its fundraising committee); Steel Beam Theatre, and her longest-standing service involvement, Lawyers for the Creative Arts.
Mary is represented by April Eberhardt of San Francisco. To read Mary’s full bio, CLICK HERE!