This year's International Women's Day is blessed with tonight's energizing lecture, “Visionary Women: Inspirations From Artists, Icons and Activists.” The lecture arrays three authors — Angella Nazarian, Karen Karbo and Paula Cizmar — against the forces of inertia, unveiling the good work of women who have made a difference for so many in this generally miserable world of ours. Nazarian wrote Pioneers of the Possible, which tells the stories of Simone de Beauvoir, Martha Graham, Wangari Maathai and many others. Karbo penned her “kick-ass women trilogy” of biographies on Georgia O'Keeffe, Katharine Hepburn and Coco Chanel (who, in point of fact, is not so kick-ass if you're Jewish). Playwright Cizmar wrote the theater piece Seven, about seven women — such as Cambodian sex traffic-buster Mu Sochua and Taliban vexer Farida Azizi — all of whom agitate for human rights with extortionate amounts of mind-melting courage. Doheny Memorial Library, 3550 Trousdale Pkwy.; Wed., March 6, 7 p.m.; free. (213) 740-2924, web-app.usc.edu/ws/eo2/calendar/32/event/898761.

Wed., March 6, 7 p.m., 2013

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