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Authors! with Stephen Guinan

The Toledo Lucas County Public Library is proud to welcome Toledo Native, Stephen Guinan, for an Authors! event.

Stephen Guinan, originally from Toledo, Ohio, is a writer and high school English and film teacher in Columbus. An Ohio State MFA recipient in fiction writing, he has had short stories and non-fiction published in The Massachusetts Review, The Green Mountains Review, The South Carolina Review, and other magazines. He is also the recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Artists fellowship for his fiction.

Over nine seasons from 1971 to 1979, one professional football team won seven championships, earning a place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as the Winningest Team in Pro Football History. In WE ARE THE TROOPERS: The Women of the Winningest Team in Pro Football History, Toledo native Stephen Guinan tells their remarkable story.

In the summer of 1971, Lee Hollar was the only woman working on the conveyor belt at the local glass factory in Toledo, Ohio. Nearby, Pam Schwartz shared a bedroom with five sisters. On weekdays she played ladylike games of volleyball with the Girls Athletic Association (GAA), but weekends were spent playing rough and tumble backyard sports with her brothers and the neighborhood boys. Lora Jean Smalley, a former GAA star, had recently returned to Toledo after suffering four gunshot wounds at the hands of an angry ex-boyfriend; a bullet was now forever lodged in her neck.

Hollar, Schwartz, and Smalley were in many ways quite different, but they were about to make a decision that would unite them forever and alter the course of sports history: They answered an ad that ran in the Toledo Blade inviting women to try out for a new football team.

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION: Stephen Guinan will be available for a 45 minute presentation followed by a brief question and answer.