Left Bank Books, in downtown Belfast, invites the public to a July 28 talk and book signing by Julia Cooke who will be discussing her new triple biography, Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World. Reservations may be made on Eventbrite.

Cooke’s book tells the stories of three trailblazing reporters—Martha Gelhorn, Emily “Mickey” Hahn, and Rebecca West—and their roles, too long overlooked, in transforming journalism. Gelhorn stowed away in the bathroom of a Red Cross hospital boat to report from Omaha Bean on D-Day. Living in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, Hahn published pieces that transported The New Yorker’s readers into the wartime life of a modern Chinese family. West interviewed the sister of Franz Ferdinand’s would-be assassin, covered the Nuremberg trials and, in 1922 at the age of twenty-nine, was arrested with Charlie Chaplin when they attempted to break into the Central Park boathouse for a midnight row.

According to a Left Bank news release, these three women led lives and careers in constant motion: writing and traveling, reporting from the front lines, publishing novels, raising children, and navigating complex networks of relationships. In their lifetimes, Cooke’s subjects were major public figures—authors of bestselling books, celebrated contributors to publications like The New York Times, Collier’s, and Vogue, the targets of near-continuous criticism, scrutiny, gossip, and occasionally praise. In Starry and Restless, readers meet these three women as the multifaceted women they insisted on being—women who, through globe-spanning careers and rich personal lives, broke new ground.

Julia Cooke is the author of Come Fly the World, a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist and The Other Side of Paradise. Her essays have appeared in Salon, The Threepenny Review, Smithsonian, and Tin House. Her reporting has been published in Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times, Playboy, and other publications. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and lives in Vermont.

Reservations may be made on Eventbrite or by emailing Left Bank Books. Ample free parking is available in front of the bookshop and in an adjacent city lot, according to Left Bank Books. Questions? Call the shop at 207-323-4856.