We will honor Sallie's wishes, although, under the circumstances, it will not be a great surprise if the event were to take on the tone of an unofficial tribute to Sallie herself.
My latest work, entitled The Blue Box, will be published in August of 2014 by Sarabande Books. From roughly 2008—2011 (I think—time has a way of lengthening, then shortening dramatically), I’ve had the deep pleasure and privilege of working on a collection of papers found in the top of my mother’s closet after she died,
>In Mending, Sallie Bingham follows the often brutal course of yearning and its disappointments with an emotional acuity both unflinching and vigilant. From the first assertions and compromises of sexuality-those accommodations that tug and chafe-to the constrictions of adulthood and, finally, the fixed contours of a maturity where need has been winnowed down, but so has our ability to accommodate, Bingham's stories radiate with an honesty that is as insistent as it is compassionate. These stories, spanning a career of 50 years and ranging from the fecund Kentucky of her youth to the starker landscapes of New Mexico, have been called "sharp, elegant narratives" by Entertainment Weekly and "luminous" by Publishers Weekly. Taken together, they offer a vision of our inexhaustible hope that there might be a fitting home for the heart.
