News & Events

Events

UPCOMING

Bankhead Reading Series
Jemison Mansion, Tuscaloosa AL
January 22, 2015

PAST

Reading @
People’s University, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA
3 p.m., March 16, 2012

Reading @
Politics & Prose
Washington, D.C.
1 p.m., March 23, 2012

“Water” a panel discussion @
the National Academy of Science’s DASER program
Keck Center, 500 5th St. NW, Washington, DC
6 p.m., March 21, 2012

Open House signing @
The Moravian Bookshop
Bethlehem, PA
November 10, 2012

“Underwater Histories” w/ NOAA’s Walter H.F. Smith @
The University of Maryland’s Digital Cultures and Creativity Program
College Park, MD
November 2, 2012

“New Generations of Knowledge” Panel w/ Robin Bell, Suzanne Carbotte, and Maya Tolstoy @
Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, NY
October 27, 2012

Friday Colloquium Talk @
Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Palisades, NY
October 26, 2012

Articles by Hali

Huffington Post
7/17/2012
“What Happened to the Astronauts to Be?”
Guest post

8/28/2012
“Marie Tharp: The Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor”
Slideshow

Reviews and Articles

“Soundings not only details its subject’s monumental work and entanglements with gender bias but also exerts thoughtful pressure on the boundaries and biases of this literary genre.” −The New York Times Book Review

“It is fitting that Felt has been able to perform the sort of data-handling magic on these mountains of memorabilia that Tharp earlier performed on Heezen’s soundings — distilling a sharp and illuminating biography that reveals the profiles and contours of a life.”−Natural History

“Tharp has at last come into her own.” −Science News

Pittsburgh City Paper
8/15/2012
“Local Author Hali Felt Offers a Biography of an Underappreciated Woman Scientist”

Scientific American
7/1/2012
Recommended reading

“In Soundings, author Hali Felt follows the traces of Tharp’s life by deftly balancing scientific explanations with the poetic…There is a personal, Didion-like voice in Felt’s narrative approach.” −Minneapolis Star Tribune

“[Explains] geologist Marie Tharp’s life in glorious, comprehensible detail.” −Cleveland Plain Dealer

“[Soundings] provides a memorable account of the golden years of oceanography during the 1940s to 1960s: a thrilling time when so much was being discovered. And it celebrates the life of Tharp as a woman and a scientist.” −Nature

“As a biographer, Hali Felt poignantly imagines a private life the way her subject interpolated the unseen deep: hauntingly conjuring what cannot be known firsthand.” −BUST

“Felt writes much as early oceanic cartographers worked, attempting to sound the depths of Tharp’s life and create a detailed picture from cold data.” −Shelf Awareness

“This is much more than a dry re-telling of how dedicated scientists followed the evidence and changed our thinking about the earth. It’s a fascinating human story that reads better than some fiction.” −Story Circle Book Review

“A complex, rich biography of a groundbreaking geologist who discovered ‘a rift valley running down the center of the Atlantic’…A well-researched, engaging account of an important scientific discovery that should also find a place on women’s-studies shelves.” −Kirkus

“The publication of this extensively researched and very warmhearted re-creation of Tharp’s life fills out a previously blank region of our knowledge of scientific history. One wonders what other treasures still lie buried in the deep.” −Bookforum

“An artfully written biography about a rakish and headstrong woman in the sometimes antagonistic boys’-club atmosphere of academia in the mid-twentieth century…This is an exceptional story told by an equally exceptional writer.” −Booklist

“Felt’s biography brings [Tharp’s] contributions to life…readers interested in biographies will appreciate Tharp’s remarkable scientific work. Recommended.” −Library Journal

“Felt’s biography reimagines [Tharp’s] progression from a nomadic childhood through scientific breakthroughs with a vivid, poetic touch, revealing an idiosyncratic and determined woman whose ‘vigorous creativity’ advanced everyone’s career but her own.” −Publishers Weekly