Palisadian Author Kimberly Wolf Dishes on New Book at Signing in Brentwood
By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor
If early reviews of her first book are any indication, Palisadian Kimberly Wolf is well on her way to becoming a bestselling author.
On May 31, though, it was her public speaking skills that impressed a crowd full of family members, childhood friends and even former classmates as she talked about the genesis of a years’ long endeavor that grew nearer and dearer to her heart with every page she wrote.
Wolf, who grew up in the Palisades and maintained academic excellence through every stage of her education—from St. Matthew’s to Marymount High to Brown University and finally Harvard grad school—read excerpts from “Talk with Her: A Dad’s Essential Guide to Raising Healthy, Confident, and Capable Daughters” in the courtyard outside of DIESEL, A Bookstore in Brentwood Country Mart.
“When people ask how long it took me to write it, I usually say about 20 years in the making,” Wolf said of the 320-page paperback published by Penguin Books. “It’s based on my experiences living here in Los Angeles, and the research I did in college and graduate school. I started writing it five year ago, then it took me a couple years to get through the proposal and sell it to Penguin, which was really exciting in and of itself—we found out about the deal in the Southwest terminal at the airport, so it was a very public celebration.
“Publishing was delayed for a while because of COVID, and so in the writing and publishing of this book on girls, I had two baby boys, but I’m a daughter and this is written from the perspective of a daughter.”
Wolf is the youngest child of longtime Palisades Charter High School Life Experience Coach Joe Spector, and the proud father, now 78, was there to listen attentively to his daughter read aloud stories of their life together.
The first passage she shared was from the book’s introduction, titled “The Girls Empowerment Movement Needs Its Dads,” which recounted a father-daughter road trip the two took to Yosemite when she was 33 years old—something she would not have gone along with as a “too cool” teenager.
The audience laughed when she recited the line: “I asked my dad if it was harder for him to raise me through my adolescent years than my brother, and he replied without hesitation, ‘Absolutely.’”
Why did she write a book for a dad? Wolf admitted she never expected to do so when she was a women’s studies major at Brown.
“I talk at length in the book how women are infinitely prepared to raise girls because we’ve been girls ourselves and it’s innate for us,” she explained, “whereas it’s a bit of mystery for men.”
Book topics include social media, body positivity, career choices, mental health, sexual health and negative peer influence—each chapter beginning with a background story designed to bring the topic into focus.
“How do we actually have conversations with young people about love?” Wolf asked. “Talking points include what you should say and shouldn’t say.”
She ended her talk by reading from the clothing chapter, dealing with a hot-button issue for a lot of dads, hers included.
“You don’t have to stay silent and give your daughter free reign to wear whatever she wants, whenever she wants,” she read. “There are a few topics you can easily touch on and few others to definitely avoid. When it comes to clothing choices, your goal is to support your daughter in developing her personal style as part of healthy self-expression. Rule number one: Don’t freak out about your daughter’s clothes all the time. You’ll exhaust yourself.”
Wolf, who flew into LA a few days before, concluded by taking questions from audience members, autographing copies of the book, and taking pictures with her dad and her husband Alex (a trial attorney whom she met in the library at Harvard), who accompanied her from Texas where they have lived for almost 10 years.
“Talk with Her” is available for purchase in bookstores and on Amazon (including a Kindle edition).
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