Red Ink: How Gertrude Gelbin Came to Publish English Books Behind the Iron Curtain

Come get a taste for Seven Seas Books and feisty American socialist, Gertrude Gelbin, who left the U.S. in the early 1950s to publish English-language paperbacks behind the Iron Curtain. From the heart of East Berlin, her Seven Seas Books sold its titles, some banned in the West, in bookstores and kiosks from Hanoi to London. This talk will include discussion of the correspondence between Gelbin and “Hollywood Ten” author, Alvah Bessie, housed at the WI Historical Society.