Madeleine Kunin on poetry, pearls and politics

Gov. Madeleine Kunin is an open book. Vermont’s only female governor has been chronicling her life in books since the mid-1990s, when she penned a memoir, Living a Political Life. Since serving as Vermont’s governor from 1985 to 1991, Kunin went on to jobs as deputy secretary of education and ambassador to Switzerland. Along the way she has been sharing her insights about women and leadership in other books, including Pearls, Politics and Power and The New Feminist Agenda. Kunin has lately turned her focus back to her own life. In Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties, Kunin, 87, offers an intimate personal narrative of growing older. She has a new book of poetry, Red Kite, Blue Sky, in which she chronicles her experience of love, loss and loneliness in the aftermath of the 2018 death of her husband, John Hennessey, Jr., and after enduring a year of Covid-19 isolation. Kunin continues to be active in politics as the founder of the Vermont chapter of Emerge, which trains Democratic women to run for office. The former governor periodically testifies in the Vermont Legislature and remains a keen observer of politics, penning regular columns for VTDigger. “We have to be vigilant to protect our democracy and to push back,” Kunin says about threats to democratic institutions from President Trump and his supporters. “That’s all the more reason for people to enter politics. We have to have voices who will speak out and speak the truth.”