Litquake 2024: Locker Room Talk with Melissa Ludtke and Ann Killion

For Litquake Festival 2024, join journalist Melissa Ludtke in conversation with San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Ann Killion on Ludtke’s debut memoir, Locker Room Talk: A Woman's Struggle to Get Inside.

documents Ludtke’s time as a Sports Illustrated reporter who was kicked out of the Yankee's locker room and the subsequent Supreme Court case that affirmed her equal rights. The judge’s order in her case opened the doors for several generations of women to be hired in sports media. Locker Room Talk is Ludtke’s gripping account of being at the core of this globally covered case that churned up ugly prejudices about the place of women in sports.

Praise for Locker Room Talk:

“Locker Room Talk gives us a front-row seat at Melissa Ludtke's celebrated courtroom battle when she went up against Major League Baseball and emerged with an enduring win for women's equal rights. I also admire her gutsy decision to share reflective insights on how the plentiful societal backlash against her buffeted her personal life as a 26-year old woman. Hers wasn't an easy struggle, but she persevered, and we are the better for it.”

~Hillary Rodham Clinton, former U.S. Secretary of State

diverse live programs are created with the aim of inspiring critical engagement with the key issues of the day, bringing people together around the common humanity encapsulated in literature, and perpetuating a sense of literary community, as well as a vibrant forum for Bay Area writing. We believe in literature as a public good, so we work to produce events that are accessible to all.

About the Authors

Melissa Ludtke was a reporter for Sports Illustrated, a correspondent for Time and editor of Nieman Reports at Harvard University. Her books include On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America and Touching Home in China: In Search of Missing Girlhoods. She received the Yankee Quill Award and Mary Garber Pioneer Award and was a Nieman Fellow and a Prudential Fellow at Columbia University.

Ann Killion has covered Bay Area sports for more than a quarter of a century. An award-winning columnist and a veteran of 11 Olympics, several World Cups and the Tour de France, Ann joined The San Francisco Chronicle in 2012. Ann has worked for the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times and Sports Illustrated. She is a New York Times best-selling author, having co-written Solo: A Memoir of Hope with soccer star Hope Solo, Throw Like A Girl with softball player Jennie Finch and two middle-grade books on soccer, Champions of Women’s Soccer and Champions of Men’s Soccer. She was named California Sportswriter of the Year in 2014, 2017 and 2018.

Host or Publisher Mechanics' Institute