Insiya Lightwalla
I was born in India and have lived in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) until I moved to the US at the age of 21. Living and learning the new culture has been quite an experience.
Currently I work at Sephora and live in San Francisco. I know Phil through the Customer Experience Councils.
So Young Park
As a musician, sci-fi and pop culture fan, and lover of world travel, my taste in reading is somewhat eclectic. Although I’ve enjoyed Plato and translated Catullus from the original Latin, nowadays I’m more inclined to read a thriller than Tolstoy, so I’m looking forward to getting back to the
classics.
Some of my all-time favorite books include:
– The Crying of Lot 49(Thomas Pynchon)
– The Trial (Franz Kafka)
– Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
– One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
– Antarctic Navigation (Elizabeth Arthur)
– Pnin (Vladimir Nabokov)
– The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins)
– Video Night in Kathmandu (Pico Iyer)
– In Conquest Born (C.S. Friedman)
and The Star Diaries (Stanislaw Lem).
So Young comes to the reading group as a friend and client of Phil’s. During the day, she’s a senior director at A&E Television.
Phil Terry
An entrepreneur and community activist, I started this readying odyssey with my close friend Pat because I wanted to do two things:
– tackle the great books
– deepen my friendship with Pat (and the others who have joined us)
Reading allows me to travel, especially time travel, from the comfort of my home. This reading group allows me to meet new people and deepen friendships in the course of this literary odyssey.
Kendall Crolius
Kendall graduated in 1976 with a degree in English from Princeton University – back when women were still something of a novelty in the Ivy League. She wrote her thesis on “The Origin And Development of The Character of Morgan Le Fay in The Arthurian Cycle” and earned extra points for finding an Arthurian topic that had not been done to death.
Her favorite course was Old English – it is gratifying to learn a language and read ALL of the extent literature in one semester. Over the years, she has found it extremely difficult to work her knowledge of Ancient Anglo-Saxon into casual conversation, though she has been known to recite the Lord’s Prayer as a party trick. Kendall now serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of the Princeton Triangle Club, which produces an original student-written musical comedy each year, and is the first woman in the Club’s 109 year history to hold a position on the Executive Committee.
After graduating from Princeton, Kendall was a professional stage manager, which is how she met her multi-talented husband, actor/director/teacher Stephen Stout. She spent almost twenty years in the ad agency business: at J. Walter Thompson she was a front-line combatant in Burger King’s historic Burger Wars of the mid-eighties; launched Pepsi Slice; and invented Kellogg’s Honey Crunch Corn Flakes; at McCann-Erickson she led the team that launched Agilent Technologies, Hewlett-Packard’s $8 billion spin-off, in 25 countries, while also heading the US Airways account-from-hell, and traveling way too much.
Kendall joined Forbes in April 2000 as Vice President of Marketing, with responsibility for all brand marketing efforts for Forbes around the world. In May 2005, she was named VP/General Manager of Forbes Conference Group and is beyond thrilled to have her first line job so late in her career. Revenue rocks.
Kendall’s book Knitting With Dog Hair was published in the US by St. Martin’s Press in 1994 and in the UK by Hutchinson, Ltd. in 1996. A pop-culture favorite, it generated an enormous amount of publicity, including a feature in People magazine, numerous radio interviews on the BBC and radio stations across the US, and segments on dozens of TV talk shows, including two appearances on CBS This Morning. The book continues to sell steadily, and is recommended on a variety of websites related to crafts, pets and survival after the apocalypse.Kendall’s other activities include co-directing her church’s Christmas Pageant; making homemade jellies and pickles; and knitting obsessively.
She lives in Southport, CT with her husband and their two teenagers: Trevor, a talented musician and filmmaker; and Martha, a dazzling writer and performer, and courageous four year cancer survivor. Kendall savors her daily commute to and from NYC because it provides the only reading opportunity she ever seems to find below 35,000 feet.
Lisa Quiñones
Lisa Quiñones is a freelance photographer based in NYC. She’s been photographing politics, portraits, news and life in NYC and abroad since the late 1980’s. You can see her work on-line at www.lisaquinones.com. Lisa has known Pat and Phil for 19 years!! (yikes) since, in a past life, they worked together as consumer and environmental lobbyists for a summer in San Diego, CA. So glad they both brought their enthusiasm and ideas to the east coast!
Bruce Upbin
Bruce Upbin is a senior editor at Forbes magazine, overseeng technology and life sciences coverage. A long time ago he earned an MFA in fiction-writing from the University of Arizona.
Pat Wictor
I’m a touring musician and songwriter, and have met some of the wonderful
folks in this group through my musical efforts. Phil Terry and I have been swapping books and discussing ideas, big and small, since we were teenage undergraduates in California–what a pleasure to continue doing that with him, and with all of you!
I spent six good years as a humanities teacher in the NYC school system, and after resigning four years ago to do music full-time, I’ve hungered for an organized setting in which to discuss big ideas and great books. I’ve come to see that “you are what you eat,” intellectually speaking, and that digestion, in the case of worthy books, is much better accomplished with others. Bon appetit, folks!
Robert Ross
Kim, Phil and I met in Junior High School and were friends until I left the school in 10th grade. We did not have contact again for approx. 20 years. My father reconnected us through Phil’s dad about 4 years ago. I am a Grand Prix Rider in the sport of Showjumping and live 8 months each year in West Palm Beach, Florida and 4 months in Bridgehampton, NY. I am also one of the founders of an organization called the Equestrian Aids Foundation. We raise money to support equestrians who have HIV/Aids.
Nancy Kopans
I am General Counsel of JSTOR, a non-profit online library of scholarly journals based in NYC. Before attending law school, I was a Ph.D. candidate in Columbia’s English Department (am A.B.D.), following undergraduate study in Geology at Dartmouth. That was a long time ago. These days, as the mother of two young girls, I find that most of my reading outside of work focuses on material geared to the under-ten crowd. I welcome the opportunity to re-engage in reading significant (grownup) works — with Phil, whom I’ve known since 1996, and his friends. What we see in great literature changes based on our experiences. I can’t say I’m wiser these days, but there’s a lot more texture to life, so it will be interesting to re-connect, or to connect for the first time, with the material the group will be reading.