Sylvia W. Kauders Lunch Series
2009-2010
November 11, 2009: Lisa DePaulo
Lisa DePaulo is currently a correspondent for GQ Magazine. Known at GQ for her political writing, DePaulo has profiled Karl Rove and Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, among others. She has also contributed to New York, Philadelphia Magazine, Talk, George, and the blog The Daily Beast. An alumna of the University of Pennsylvania, DePaulo now resides in New York City.
September 30, 2009: Pete Dexter
Pete Dexter, a Michigan native, is an author and former columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and The Sacramento Bee. As a fiction writer, his works include 1988 National Book Award winner Paris Trout (1988, Random House) and 1996 Literary Award recipient The Paperboy (1996, Dell Publishing). He has also written screenplays for Paris Trout, Rush, Michael, and Mulholland Falls. He currently resides in the Puget Sound region of Washington.
2008-2009
March 9, 2009: Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez was a Philadelphia Inquirer columnist from 1986 to 1997 and is currently a columnist for the L.A. Times. His book Land of Giants: Where No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (1995) is a collection of his best Inquirer columns. He is also the author of the novels Third and Indiana (1995), The Sunday Macaroni Club (1997), and In The Clear (2002). His book The Soloist (2008, G.P. Putnam's Sons) was recently chosen as the book for Philadelphia's community reading project, One Book, One Philadelphia. Adapted into a motion picture starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx, The Soloist is based on a series of Lopez's columns published in the Los Angeles Times in 2005.
October 22, 2008: Will Bunch
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order on his blog, Attytood. He is the senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and its former political writer. Will's been covering presidential campaigns and conventions all the way back to Jesse Jackson's historic 1984 bid. Working for the spunky Philly paper that GQ once called "arguably the best tabloid in America," he's gained national recognition for his scoops on the mysteries of 9/11, the crash of Flight 93, the war in Iraq and the beheading of Nick Berg.
October 3, 2008: Gerald M. Stern
Sylvia Kauders and Gerald Stern
Gerald M. Stern, author of The Scotia Widows: Inside Their Lawsuit Against Big Daddy Coal (Random House, 2008), was a founding partner of the Washington, D.C. law firm of Rogovin, Stern & Huge. Prior to that he was a partner with Arnold and Porter for eleven years, where he was the lead counsel for the survivors of the Buffalo Creek Disaster. He wrote about that experience in The Buffalo Creek Disaster, a recently reissued book still widely used in law schools. Before joining Arnold and Porter he was a trial attorney with the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, trying voting discrimination cases in the South. He wrote about those experiences in two books, Southern Justice and Outside the Law. He has also served as General Counsel of Occidental Petroleum Corporation and as Special Counsel to the United States Department of Justice. Presently, he is a legal consultant and lives in Washington, D.C.
2007-2008
April 11, 2008: Leo Bretholz
March 6, 2008: Dick Polman
Dick Polman is the Maury Povich "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania and writes a Sunday political column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as a daily political blog, Dick Polman's American Debate. He has been cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters. He has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR, and the BBC, and lectures frequently in the community about journalism and presidential politics. He was on the presidential campaign trail in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004, and is currently teaching a Penn course on commentary writing during the historic 2008 primaries.
