Kathleen Brady

When Lucille Ball was born in Jamestown, New York on August 6, 1911, William H. Taft was president, there were forty-six states, and U.S. women were nine years away from achieving the right to vote. For all that she is synonymous with the immortal Lucy Ricardo, Lucille Ball is fixed in time. The year 2011 is her centennial and the occasion of a new (and sixth) edition of Kathleen Brady's Lucille the Life of Lucille Ball from iUniverse.

In recognition of the author's biography Ida Tarbell: Portrait of a Muckraker (now a University of Pittsburgh Press paperback), she was named a Fellow of the Society of American Historians. She co-authored Your Pain is Real with the neurologist Emile Hiesiger.

The author has written passionately about New York City issues: Giuliani's short-sightedness, New York City's flawed bid for the 2012 Olympics, corporate and state hostility toward Gotham's workforce, plus shenanigans that compromise the city's electoral clout, are among topics Kathleen Brady has considered in opinion pieces about New York City, most of which appeared in New York Newsday and Our Town. Until recently, as the Director of Communications of the non-profit NYC Employment & Training Coalition, she wrote the popular niche e-newsletter Workforce Weekly. She was also Senior Writer in the Communications Department of the New York City Department of Education in 2004 and 2005.

Brady was featured on the American Masters PBS special about Lucille Ball and narrated the first installment of the 1993 PBS series "The Prize." She also appears on the A&E Biography of the Rockefeller family and has discussed her work on NPR.

The 1994 ABC-TV movie, "A Passion for Justice," starring Jane Seymour, was based on Brady's research into the life of Mississippi journalist and civil rights activist Hazel Brannon Smith. Brady is Director of Communications for NYC Employment & Training Coalition, a nonprofit organization that advocates for job training and advancement for entry level and mid-skill workers. She is a past co-director of the Biography Seminar at New York University and a former reporter for Time Magazine.

Click the "My Works" tab in the upper right to see Kathleen Brady's columns for Newsday.

And please download the author's podcasts on the early life of Francis of Assisi through ITunes or at www.francisofassisi.libsyn.com/​rss