Person

Kay, Linda

1951-2018

Linda Kay was born on December 3, 1951 in Brooklyn and died on October 12, 2018 in Montreal. She attended Syracuse University where she received a BA in Journalism in 1972. From 1972 to 1975, she worked as a political reporter for the Paterson News in New Jersey. Then she worked for the San Diego Evening Tribune from 1975 to 1980, as a sportswriter and was part of a team of reporters and editors that won the Pulitzer Prize for best local reporting under deadline in 1979. In 1980, she moved to the Chicago Tribune as a columnist and sports writer where she worked until 1989 before moving to Montreal. She began her teaching career at Concordia University in 1990 at the department of Journalism. She also pursued her studies at Concordia and got a MA in Media Studies in 2001. She was promoted associate professor in 2006 and full professor in 2014. In 2007, she won the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence in the Faculty of Arts and Science and in 2013 she received the Woman of Distinction in Communications Award from the Women’s Y Foundation of Montreal. She is a fellow of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute since 2003.

Professor Kay’s research interest the history of female journalists in Canada and the study of methodologies that journalists employ when covering traumatic or tragic events. In June 2004, she attended the Centennial Celebration of the Canadian Women’s Press Club (CWPC) in Ottawa and conducted interviews with CWPC members about their journalism experiences and reminiscences for a short video called “Women of Daring” that she wrote and directed for a course on Gender and Journalism in 2005.

Linda Kay published articles for numerous newspapers and magazines and she wrote three books: The Sweet Sixteen : The Journey that Inspired the Canadian Women's Press Club (McGill-Queen's University Press 2012). The French translation, Elles étaient seize, was published in 2015 (Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal), The Reading List (Hamilton Books, 2005) and Romantic Days and Nights in Montreal: Intimate Escapes in The Paris of North America (The Globe Pequot Press, 1997). In The Sweet Sixteen, Linda Kay narrates the ten-day trip of sixteen Canadian women journalist traveling together by train to cover the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 that resulted in the formation of the Canadian Women’s Press Club (CWPC).

2018-05-08