Unfortunately due to unforeseen personal circumstances, the Frances Perkins Talk by Kirstin Downey is postponed and will be rescheduled in the fall. If you want to be notified when this talk is rescheduled, join our email list.

Join us after the 11am Sung Mass for a talk by Author and Biographer, Kirstin Downey, about Frances Perkins, former US Secretary of Labor (1933-1945), first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet, and former member of the parish. Light refreshments will be served.

Kirstin Downey is a writer and journalist, and a long-time reporter at the Washington Post. She is the author of The Woman Behind the New Deal, a biography of the remarkable Frances Perkins, the architect of much of America's social safety net, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, the ban on child labor and the 40-hour work week. Perkins was an idealist and a political genius who took inspiration for her work from her religious convictions as a faithful parishioner of St. Monica and St. James Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill.  

Downey is also the author of Isabella the Warrior Queen, a biography of Queen Isabella of Castile, the most influential female ruler in European history. 

She was recently named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize as part of the Honolulu Civil Beat team that covered the tragic Maui fire and its aftermath.

Downey splits her time between Washington DC and Honolulu, where she is writing a new history of Hawaii. Her husband is Neil Averitt, a veteran attorney at the Federal Trade Commission and author of The Single Gospel, a book that edits together the four primary gospel accounts of Jesus's life into a single narrative.