Unheard Witness
Jo's Newest Book
Now available in hardcover, Kindle, and Audible wherever books are sold!
From University of Texas Press:
Unheard Witness foregrounds a young woman’s experience of domestic abuse, resistance, and survival before the mass shooting at the University of Texas at Austin in 1966.
In 1966, Kathy Leissner Whitman was a twenty-three-year-old teacher dreaming of a better future. She was an avid writer of letters, composing hundreds in the years before she was stabbed to death by her husband, Charles Whitman, who went on to commit a mass shooting from the tower at the University of Texas at Austin. Kathy’s writing provides a rare glimpse of how one woman expressed, and sought to change, her short life with a coercive, controlling, and violent partner.
Unheard Witness provides a portrait of Kathy’s life, doing so at a time when Americans are slowly grasping the link between domestic abuse and mass shooting. Public violence often follows violence in the home, yet such private crimes continue to be treated separately and even erased in the public imagination. Jo Scott-Coe studies Kathy’s letters against the grain of the official history, which ignored Kathy’s perspective. With its nuanced understanding of abuse and survival, Unheard Witness is an intimate, real-time account of trust and vulnerability—in its own way, a prologue for our age of atrocity.
Praise for unheard witness
“In Unheard Witness, Jo Scott-Coe takes a story you might think you know and turns it on its head. The life of Kathy Leissner Whitman, told with intimacy, empathy, and care, reveals how private cruelty and public violence are deeply entwined. Too often, stories about mass shooters inadvertently glorify the perpetrators while the victims remain an afterthought. This perceptive, beautifully written book shows how much there is to learn when we do the opposite.”
- Rachel Monroe, Contributing writer at The New Yorker, author of Savage Appetites
Jo's Story
-
Jo Scott-Coe’s most recent book is Unheard Witness: The Life and Death of Kathy Leissner Whitman (University of Texas Press).
-
Her previous two nonfiction books are Teacher at Point Blank (Aunt Lute) and MASS: A Sniper, a Father, and a Priest (Pelekinesis).
-
Jo’s essays on intersections of public-private violence have been published widely for general as well as academic audiences.
-
Her work has appeared in publications including TIME, Salon, The Los Angeles Times, American Studies Journal, Tahoma Literary Review, Talking Writing, Catapult, Pacific Coast Philology, The Press-Enterprise, Superstition Review, and many others.
-
Her nonfiction has received three Notable listings in Best American Essays and two Pushcart Special Mentions.
-
In 2020, MASS was awarded the silver medal for biography from eLit Awards.
Mass
from Pelekinesis
On August 1, 1966, after murdering his wife and mother at home, Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower at UT Austin and ordained himself high priest of the first televised mass shooting and "domestic terror" spectacle in American history. Without realizing it, Whitman replicated a twisted version of the Catholic rituals he had learned as an altar boy, in a culture where he saw how priests and fathers could get away with almost anything. This gruesome liturgy has continued to repeat on TV and in headlines for more than half a century. In MASS: A SNIPER, A FATHER, AND A PRIEST Jo Scott-Coe uncovers a buried story to probe the hidden wounds of paternal-pastoral failure and to interrogate our collective American conscience.
“…powerfully indicts domestic violence, the church, and the military as common training grounds for the kind of mass violence that is now emerging as a regular ritual of our American (masculine) exceptionalism.”
– David Adams, internationally known expert on domestic violence, co-founder of Emerge, author of Why Do They Kill? Men Who Murder Their Intimate Partners
“…extrapolates the essential elements that help us understand current tragic events with the insight of an investigative reporter and the skill of a novelist.”
– Richard Sipe, pioneering researcher on sexual abuse in Catholicism and author of Sex, Priests, and Power: Anatomy of a Crisis
“…a relevant, clear-eyed look at what has become all too common: the shooting tragedy that defies logic until a work like Scott-Coe’s shows we can understand if we try.”
– Nancy Rommelmann, American journalist and author of To The Bridge
Teacher at Point Blank
from Aunt Lute Books
Why would a high school teacher who loves teaching leave school―after half a career in the classroom? Teacher at Point Blank answers this question at a time when concerns about school performance, safety, and teacher attrition are at an all-time and often anxious high.
“…at once disturbing and emancipating”
- Susan Ohanian, author of What Ever Happened to Recess and Why Are Our Children Struggling in Kindergarten?
“…unyielding to sentimentality and aspires always towards honesty about our lives as adults and children. One is, here, in the presence of a writer who convinces us that teaching young lives is a constant and, sometimes, terrible journey of adult self-discovery.”
– Richard Rodriguez, author of Darling: A Spiritual Biography
Writer, educator, researcher, communicator
Jo has a wealth of experience working with writers, community groups, nonprofit advocates, and academic institutions.
EVents
Unheard Witness at American Association of University Women (AAUW) Upland
Saturday
Feb. 8, 2025,
10 AM
For inquiries about booking Jo for a workshop or speaking engagement, please use contact information below.