Author Jane Alison to Deliver Kentucky Women Writers Keynote

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Sept 17, 2019) — Jane Alison, author of the memoir "The Sisters Antipodes," will give the keynote speech at the 2019 Kentucky Women Writers Conference, scheduled for Sept. 19-22. The free public talk, presented in conjunction with University of Kentucky Libraries, will begin 7:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20, at the Pam Miller Downtown Arts Center. Alison is replacing the previously schedule speaker Nicole Chung, who canceled due to a family illness.

“Jane Alison is the hero of this year’s conference for stepping up to give the keynote with very short notice,” said conference director Julie Kuzneski Wrinn. “She’s going to talk about truth and form in storytelling, and how the traditional dramatic arc of rising and falling action is a bit masculosexual compared to the variety of other possibilities from the natural world.”

Jane Alison is the author of four novels — "The Love-Artist," "The Marriage of the Sea," "Natives and Exotics" and the nonfiction novel "Nine Island." She has published a memoir, "The Sisters Antipodes," about growing up in a family in which Australian-diplomat parents traded partners with a pair of U.S. diplomats; and "Change Me," translations of Ovid’s stories of sexual transformation. Her newest book, on the craft and theory of writing, is "Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative." Her essays and stories have appeared in the Paris Review, The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe and TriQuarterly, among others, and her writing has been set to music by composer Thomas Sleeper. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia.

In addition to her public keynote lecture, Alison will give a reading and lead a two-day workshop on “The Potent Image” at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, both for conference registrants only.

The 40th anniversary Kentucky Women Writers Conference will take place Sept. 19–22, 2019, at the Carnegie Center and other Lexington venues. A program of the UK College of Arts and Sciences, the conference is the longest running literary festival of women in the nation. For more information on the conference, visit online at www.kentuckywomenwriters.org or call 859-257-2874