Judy Blume: A Life, with Author Mark Oppenheimer

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Sally Stieglitz

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Apr 8, 2026, 8:27:56 AM (10 days ago) Apr 8

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Judy Blume: A Life, with Author Mark Oppenheimer

Wednesday, April 15
11:00am - 12:00pm (EST)

Join LILRC when we welcome author Mark Oppenheimer, to discuss his highly-anticipated biography of Judy Blume, one of the world’s most beloved literary voices, showcasing a life as triumphant and inspiring as the stories she crafted.

To know the name Judy Blume is to know and love literature. Her influential novels turned classics—including Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret; Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great; Forever…; and Summer Sisters—touched the lives of tens of millions of adults and children. For fifty-five years her work has done something revolutionary: rewired the world’s expectation of what literature for young people can be—frank, candid, earthy, and unafraid to show the messier sides of humanity. But too little has been known about the real woman behind the iconic persona, and the unlikely journey of her literary ascension, until now.

Seasoned journalist and lifelong Blume fan Mark Oppenheimer is uniquely positioned to tell this story. He had complete access to unpublished writings, private papers, and 100+ interviews with Blume, along with her friends and associates, while writing JUDY BLUME: A Life (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, March 10, 2026). The result is a revealing, captivating, often surprising portrait of this beloved author.

Mark Oppenheimer has been covering American religion for 25 years. He holds a Ph.D. in religious studies from Yale, and has taught at Stanford, Wesleyan, Wellesley, NYU, Boston College, and Yale, where he was the founding director of the Yale Journalism Initiative. From 2010 to 2016, he wrote the “Beliefs” column for The New York Times, and he has also written for publications including The New Yorker, The Nation, GQ, Slate, and many more. He created Unorthodox, the world’s most popular podcast about Jewish life and culture, with over 7 million downloads. More recently, he hosted an eight-part podcast called Gatecrashers, about the history of Jews and antisemitism at Ivy League schools. He is the author of five books, including The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia and, most recently, Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood. He edits Arc magazine and lives in Connecticut with his wife, four daughters, one son, and one dog.