Event and Book

Watch Party Definition: This is a unique evening. Nina Totenberg will not be in Traverse City for this event. Instead, we’re delighted to welcome her to the City Opera House through Zoom where guest host April Baer will interview her. You can attend this event at the City Opera House, but only April will be on stage talking to Nina Totenberg via television monitor. April Baer is the host of Stateside, a Monday through Friday Michigan Radio show. Livestreaming is also available if you’d like to watch the conversation from the comfort of your own home.

The National Writers Series proudly presents a conversation with NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg. Guest host April Baer will be at the City Opera House to chat with Nina who will join the conversation from New York City via monitor on stage.

Ticket Prices (this is a book bundled event):

Each ticket comes with Nina’s hardcover book, Dinners with Ruth, which can be shipped to you or picked up at Horizon Books:

Watch Party Tickets are general admission to the City Opera House and cost $37 per person and include a copy of Totenberg’s book.

Virtual Tickets are also $37, plus a $5.50 book shipping fee.

Totenberg delivers an extraordinary memoir of her personal successes, struggles, and life-affirming relationships, including her beautiful friendship of nearly fifty years with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, and nearly 22 years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. A reporter for The National Observer, Nina was curious about Ruth’s legal brief that asked the Supreme Court to do something revolutionary: declare a law that discriminated “on the basis of sex” to be unconstitutional. That phone call launched a remarkable, nearly 50-year friendship.

Dinners with Ruth is an extraordinary 
account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers. It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships. At the story’s heart is one, special relationship: Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood. During Ruth’s last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were “reserved for Ruth” in Nina’s house.

Nina Totenberg is NPR’s award-winning legal affairs correspondent. She appears on NPR’s critically acclaimed news magazines All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Weekend Edition, and on NPR podcasts, including The NPR Politics Podcast and its series, The Docket. Totenberg’s Supreme Court and legal coverage has won her every major journalism award in broadcasting. Recognized seven times by the American Bar Association for continued excellence in legal reporting, she has received more than two dozen honorary degrees. A frequent TV contributor, she writes for major newspapers, magazines, and law reviews.

Guest Host April Baer is the host of Michigan Radio’s Stateside talk show. Prior to her arrival in Michigan, April was the host of the weekly show State of Wonder on Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) for six years. Before that, she was the Morning Edition host and a reporter at OPB, covering beats that included government and legal affairs, changing demographics, and the arts.