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Camden Public library welcomes journalist and author Susan Kellam for a book talk and discussion about her newly-released memoir, Brilliant Disguise. This event will take place on Thursday, August 15, at 6:30 p.m. in the Picker Room.
After their nuclear family exploded into a vaporous mushroom cloud, the two siblings could only, as Bert the Turtle jingled in civil-defense cartoons, duck and cover. The young Susan basked in her brother Robert’s glow. Teachers singled her out because, certainly, the little sister would excel too. But how could she ever reach their expectations? Instead, she rebelled, chose the wrong men, drank and took drugs.
Susan talked her way into a job at Rolling Stone magazine in 1976. Three years later, as an organizer of five nights of No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden with Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, and many more, she got snared in the rock politics scramble and her brother saved her. Many years later, though, she could not save him.
Only in retrospect can Susan piece together how Robert’s too-brief life was a brilliant disguise. Traumatized by their childhood experience, he buried his pain behind an outsized personality. On his twelfth wedding anniversary in 1990, he ended his life. This book winds together Susan’s rock-and-roll odyssey with an exploration of Robert’s life, teasing out clues as to why the past so dangerously swamped him.
Brilliant Disguise is her journey to discover what she missed in her brother’s 39 years as Big K, adored by all. And, why she—Little K—survived.
” . . . Between the dramatic work-related events and torrid affairs recalled in the casually affecting tone of one of Mary Gaitskill’s protagonists, Kellam’s story always comes back to her brother, even after he’s gone. An expansive, heartbreaking, and engaging memoir about weathering tragedy and coming of age.” —Kirkus Reviews
Susan Kellam started her career at Rolling Stone magazine when typewriters were still being flung across offices. Eventually leaving the rock-and-roll world for straight journalism, she received a 1985 Folio Award for a three-part series in The New York Times, “Battling for a Prize: Radio Station License.” Her work has also appeared in The Washington Post, Washingtonian magazine, Congressional Quarterly, The Baltimore Sun, and numerous other places.
She finished her full-time career as senior communications expert on domestic policy at the Brookings Institution. The Obama administration tapped her to edit the Economic Report of the President for the four years of his second term; the Biden administration did the same for his first year. Susan was a contributing writer on the book, How Ten Global Cities Take on Homelessness (May 2021, University of California Press). She lives on a salt-water farm in Maine with two rambunctious dogs.
Learn more about Susan and read her most recent articles, including a piece in Newsweek this month, at www.susan-kellam.com.