Kate Moore visited Hammond to talk about her nationally acclaimed book “The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women” and the lives of the women depicted in it.

The talk brought attendees to the Hammond Regional Arts Center on Nov. 3 at 10 a.m.

Media Coordinator for HRAC Tara Bennett described the event as “a wonderful opportunity for the Hammond community.”

“It’s a great privilege to be able to host Kate Moore who has come all the way from London to speak on her life experience as an author,” said Bennett. “She was obviously very moved by the lives of the women she wrote about.”

Moore’s interest to start writing her book began when she was looking for a play to direct.

“I didn’t know anything about the Radium Girls,” said Moore. “I was simply looking for the next play I wanted to direct, and I Googled ‘great plays for women’ because I wanted to tell a story where women were a part of that story, where they were the protagonists of the action, and the play that came back on that Google search was ‘These Shining Lives’ by Melanie Marnich about the Ottawa dial painters.”

The narrative account follows the lives of women who experienced radiation poisoning from painting watch dials. To Moore, the women’s suffering was “almost impossible for us to image or empathize with.”

“These women were incredible because they were suffering so much, and yet they chose to fight back against what had happened to them,” said Moore. “Despite the pain they were in, they found the strength to battle on, and what is remarkable about these women is that those in authority were not interested in what was happening to the girls, and it was the girls themselves who banded together to bring attention to what was wrong.”