UK Happenings

Celebrated Ky. Historical Authors to Present at Women Writers Event

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LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 30, 2015)  Two celebrated writers with Kentucky connections are among the featured presenters at the upcoming Kentucky Women Writers Conference being held Sept. 11-12, in Lexington. Biographer and historian Emily Bingham and historical novelist Jacinda Townsend will give a reading and present workshops exploring how to write about individuals' lives and character conflicts. 

Emily Bingham’s most recent book, "Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), unearths the unexpected story of her bisexual great aunt, the daughter of newspaper publisher and politician Robert Worth Bingham. The New York Times Book Review said, "Henrietta Bingham’s greatest achievement was making people fall in love with her. Thus she offers a delicious excuse to be back in a time and among a group in which love was celebrated with gratifying complexity and tenderness." Her previous books are "Mordecai: An Early American Family" (Hill and Wang) and "The Southern Agrarians and the New Deal: Essays After I’ll Take My Stand" (University of Virginia Press).

A Louisville native, Bingham has taught at Centre College, University of Louisville, Bellarmine University and St. Francis High School, and her articles and reviews have appeared in The Journal of Southern History, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and New England Review.

As part of Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Bingham will present a workshop titled "Writing Lives: Loud and Quiet." The nonfiction/biography workshop examines what it means to write biographically — to choose, document and construct a life using hard data along with imagination in such a way that leaves the reader satisfied yet still thinking.

Jacinda Townsend’s debut novel, "Saint Monkey," won the 2015 James Fenimore Cooper Prize, awarded biennially by the Society of American Historians to the best novel concerning American history, and was named Honor Book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. A coming-of-age tale set in 1950s Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, "Saint Monkey" is told in two friends' alternating points of view and weaves the stark realities of the Jim Crow South with the vibrancy of the Harlem jazz scene.

A native of southcentral Kentucky, Townsend has published short fiction in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, and her nonfiction has been anthologized and published in two different series of "Chicken Soup for the Soul." A former Fulbright fellow and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she teaches creative writing at Indiana University.

Townsend will also present a workshop at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference titled "Conflict Through Character." Participants in this fiction workshop will identify the six major ways that characters announce themselves on the page and then examine the channel that leads easily from characterization to conflict to plot.

Both workshops are from 2–4:15 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Sept. 11-12, and a limited number of slots are still available. To enroll in either Bingham or Townsend's workshop, conference registration must be purchased in advance. A listing of the events' times and dates can be found here: http://womenwriters.as.uky.edu/itinerary. For more information and to register, visit www.kentuckywomenwriters.org.

In addition to their workshops, Bingham and Townsend will do a joint reading of their work as part of the conference. Their reading will begin 11:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 11. Attendance at the reading requires purchase of general admission to the conference.

Now in its 37th year, the Kentucky Women Writers Conference is an annual event known for bringing notable women writers to Lexington for readings, writing workshops and discussions. A program housed in the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, the conference is made possible in part by continued community partnerships, including its primary venue, the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. Registration for the conference is open now.

For more information on the conference or the Emily Bingham or Jacinda Townsend events, visit online at www.kentuckywomenwriters.org

MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Hale, 859-257-8716; whitney.hale@uky.edu