The Class of ‘74 - Nostalgia, Resilience, And The Power of Community with Laura Van Wormer (Ep 104)
Laura Van Wormer is the creative force behind "The Class of ’74," a serialized fictional podcast that blends nostalgia, drama, and meticulous historical detail. Set in 1971–1974 in a well-heeled Connecticut suburb of New York City, the show has been praised for its authenticity and period-accurate setting, detail and events, and draws on Laura’s decades of experience as a novelist, editor and researcher, with a specialty in the ways the past informs the present. Her storytelling style is rooted in a good sense of humor, character psychology, the rhythms of small-town life, and creates a world listeners fall in love with. She herself was a member of the Class of '74 in Darien, Connecticut and was infamous for stopping high school parties to read stories she had written. Laura started her career at Doubleday as a secretary (in the era Jackie Onassis worked there) and worked her way up to editor. She left to pursue her own writing and while learning how to write a novel, supported herself by creating books with the creators of the hit night-time TV serials, "Dynasty," "Dallas" and "Knots Landing."Laura's first novel, RIVERSIDE DRIVE, was a bestseller when it was published in 1988. She published 13 more novels with major houses but in 2015 she was on her way to the airport to visit Betty White in Los Angeles when a drunk driver going the wrong way on the Merritt Parkway in CT hit her head-on. She woke up a month later in Yale New Haven hospital with a crushed collar bone, 16 broken ribs, torn diaphragm, broken knee, and a severed foot that required four surgeries to save.Ten years later she attended her 50th high school reunion and was sad because no one could hear her. When she went home her other half suggested why didn’t she write a story as a podcast so her classmates could hear her – and THE CLASS OF ’74 was born, a weekly narrative soap opera about teenagers starting high school in 1971. While the story is fiction, it faithfully recreates the fascinating time before cell phones existed and is guaranteed to take the listeners' minds off their problems – at least for half an hour each week.Check out The Class of '74 here!}
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