A mere mention of South Boston sometimes conjures up images of the late mobster Whitey Bulger, 89, and protests against mandated busing to desegregate the city's schools during the 1970s.
But there is another side of "the town" that many people don't realize, according to co-authors Anna Weeks and Phyllis Karas. more...
MacDowell Names Library for Baldwin Southie Women During Reign of Bulger
Nov 4, 2018
The Boston Sunday Globe
Though he just died last week James “Whitey’’ Bulger will likely remain a presence in the city for years to come. In “Women of Southie: Finding Resilience During Whitey Bulger’s Infamous Reign’’ (Changing Lives). Phyllis Karas and Anna Weeks tell the harrowing story of six women, describing their lives, hardships, and triumphs in the neighborhood when the gangster and his drug business were at the height of their influence. The pages are filled with more...
Phyllis Karas, Author of “Women of Southie”, to Speak in Marblehead on Tuesday Oct. 30
October 25, 2018
ItemLive.com/The Daily Item
Meet Phyllis Karas. Grandmother. Doctor’s wife. Mob biographer.
“How does a nice Jewish grandmother from Marblehead get involved with South Boston mobsters?” asks Karas, repeating the reporter’s obvious question. more...
At a time when women are speaking up about painful, personal experiences, the book “Women of Southie” is particularly timely. Subtitled “Finding Resilience During Whitey Bulger’s Infamous Reign,” the book is the story of six South Boston women whose lives were shaped by... more...
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Phoenix Review
April 30, 2006
By Julia Dennis
Kevin Weeks, the number two man in Whitey Bulger’s mob, served a three-year sentence for racketeering, money-laundering, extortion, and drug conspiracy, and was released from the Allenwood Federal Correctional facility on a Friday in February, 2005. By the following Tuesday he was singing like a canary to a diminutive grandmother, young-adult novelist, and journalism professor from Newton named Phyllis Karas. more...
Professor Helps Pen "Brutal" Mobster's Biography
Spring 2006
By Caryl Rivers
If you saw journalism professor Phyllis Karas walking down Commonwealth Avenue, you'd think this willowy, elegantly-coiffed lady was off to a business lunch in some swank downtown restaurant. You would never expect that she was more likely to be heading toward a meeting with a mobster than to a Newbury Street luncheon. Karas is the co-author of "Brutal" -- newly arrived on The New York Times bestseller list. It's the story of Kevin Weeks, the career criminal from South Boston, whose testimony convicted famed mobster more...
Ari's Fate
November 1998
By Peter Ames Carlin and Toula Vlahou
Aristotle Onassis was already one of the world’s wealthiest men when Kiki Feroudi Moutsatsos first walked into his Athens office in 1966. Just 17, she was hoping to land a job in the Greek shipping magnate’s office. Moutsatsos didn’t even recognize the diminutive tycoon when he stormed by, too preoccupied with the decline of Greece’s currency to return her smile. But moments later ... more...
April, 1997
By Nathan Cobb
The accidental author When vacationing in Marblehead writer Phyllis Karas checked into her Greek Hotel, little did know she would check out with the million-dollar tale of Jackie and Aristotle Onassis. more...
Her Novel Has Set Marblehead Abuzz
August 28, 1981
By Peggy Shehan McLean
A friend's wedding last summer turned out to be a rite of passage for Phyllis Karas as well-- a literary one which provided the fabric from which she wove her first novel. "I was very moved by the wedding. I hadn't seen a lot of the people in 15 years, since we got out of college, and so much had happened to us'" began Karas, during an interview in the sun-drenched family room of her sprawling shingled house near the Marblehead shore. The experience triggered her imagination... more...
AWARDS, HONORS
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Best feature story award from New England Press Association, 1979, for a series on teenage pregnancy.
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Simon Rockover Award for Excellence in Feature Writing for a 1991 article in Moment magazine about kosher slaughter.