Invitation to virtual salon and conversation with Iris Dunkle reading from her new book on Charmian London

[Larry Robinson]

You are cordially invited to join us for a virtual salon featuring Sonoma County’s Poet Laureate 
Emerita Iris Dunkle 

reading from her new book “Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer”

Sunday, December 6 at 3:00 PM

This will be an excellent opportunity to meet one of Sonoma County’s finest writers and to learn about an extraordinary trailblazing woman.


You can register at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEsduqrpzgoHNfSRUMHjbW5mA9ca5HJ70J7 <https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEsduqrpzgoHNfSRUMHjbW5mA9ca5HJ70J7> 


Below is an excellent article about Iris and the book from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.










New book shows Jack London’s wife Charmian helped shape his works

MEG MCCONAHEY <https://www.pressdemocrat.com/meg-mcconahey/>
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
November 9, 2020

There is an iconic photo of the writer Jack London, astride his horse in a meadow atop Sonoma Mountain. Reproduced everywhere, from book covers to promotions for trail rides, it is classic Jack. But who was up there on the mountain with him? The photographer was never credited.

Local writer Iris Jamahl Dunkle wondered who took that photo, who perfectly framed the shot to capture the man and horse against a panoramic view of The Valley of the Moon about which he wrote so passionately. It was while researching Charmian London, Jack London’s wife, that Dunkle unlocked the mystery. She saw the picture in a small volume she bought off eBay, “Our Valley of the Moon in Poems and Pictures,” self-published by Nell Griffin Wilson in the early 1940s. By then a widow for more than 20 years, Charmian contributed that photo for the book, a photo she herself took.

It’s the kind of nugget that thrills a researcher like Dunkle. The seemingly small discovery speaks to some of the many undisclosed truths about Charmian — that she was an accomplished photographer, writer and skillful editor in her own right and a thoroughly modern career woman at the dawn of the modern age. She also was, like so many women in history, somewhat lost in the long shadow of her husband.

Dunkle’s new book, “Charmian Kittredge London: Trailblazer, Author, Adventurer” (University of Oklahoma Press), is the first comprehensive full-length biography devoted solely to the other half of the early 20th century power couple. And it shows Charmian was far more than Jack’s wife.

“They were intellectual equals,” said Dunkle, a poet, English instructor at Napa Valley College and a Jack London scholar. “He had this super-fast and interesting intellect, and she was right there with him. That’s something a lot of people don’t attribute to her.”


Read the rest of the article here: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/lifestyle/new-book-shows-charmian-london-as-daring-and-accomplished/
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