Thursday, June 12, 2025
A cozy dining room at the Georgetown Club filled with women of all ages and a surprising number of well-dressed men greeted 83 year-old Sally Quinn.
She is an acclaimed author, Washington Post columnist and Georgetown hostess-with-the mostest as wife (and influencer) of the Post’s powerful managing then executive editor Ben Bradlee from 1965-1991. She spoke at Georgetown’s monthly Q&A Café organized by CBS News producer and longtime Georgetowner Carol Joynt on June 10, about her newest novel, “Silent Retreat.”
“It’s about my efforts to redefine my identity now since Ben died,” Quinn said. She had had a profoundly rich and stimulating life with him as head of the rising most important newspaper in Washington, D.C., and the world (through the Watergate period even), hosting leaders of the nation at dinners and social events at their home on N Street that almost always were strongly bipartisan. She began as a television correspondent — one of the first women in the industry — then moved to reporting in the Washington Post, about the culture and social life in Georgetown and the rest of the nation’s capital.
Eventually, Quinn co-founded a Washington Post section — now, a website and a regular column — focused on religious faith. And on love.
Like her book, “Finding Magic,” which is part hot romantic novel and part thoughts and reflections about religious faith, “Silent Retreat” is a mixed memoir and fiction. “It’s a story of love, faith, longing and ecstasy,” Quinn wrote on her website. “It’s about what happens when all four collide in the quietest and most unlikely of place — a retreat in an old monastery that is based on utter silence.”
“Men may find this particularly refreshing,” Quinn said at the Georgetown lunch. But she, a sociable and talkative social female, became convinced of the healing, cleaning side of silence. It has led to her spending increased time to meditate and to find her identity in a new age and stage, taking care of Ben and herself as his dementia slowly advanced (he died in 2014).
“Now I’m trying to figure out what to do with my life,” Quinn said. “My mother once told me to focus on making more people happy. I would love to be married again.”
While she is still involved with many if the organizations and charities that she had been with Bradlee, Quinn has consciously backed away from large social gatherings, such as embassy receptions with hundreds of people. During the pandemic’s social distancing years, Quinn had analyzed that D.C.’s famous social schmoozing would now take place in large embassy reception halls among highly selected people with screened invitations. Today, she prefers a small dinner party or gathering of friends where they can talk personally and even play games and laugh a lot.
Does she still host bipartisan dinners for which she and other Washington ladies with influence were famous for? Joynt asked.
“No” Quinn answered. “I really don’t know what I would talk about to Trump supporters. “They don’t share my values.” When The Georgetowner asked her if she had any close friends who voted for Trump, she shook her head vigorously no.
Quinn told a Washingtonian reporter that her novel addresses big questions but that it’s also a lot of fun. “If anyone said it was boring, I’d go kill myself,” she joked.
She needn’t worry. Her manners, her fascinating background, her sociableness plus a reading by Carol Joynt of a panting, salacious part of the book, assured everyone at the Q&A Cafe that Sally Quinn could never be boring to read or to dine with.