Sallie will be presenting a two-part workshop on the short story, "Writing What You Don't Know: Fiction as Transformation - Workshop in Short Story" on Friday and Saturday from 9 - 11:30 am. . On Saturday from 1:30 - 2:45 Sallie will be reading from Mending, her new collection of short stories, which is open
>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.
Sallie will be reading with Yiyun Li, a judge in this year's PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize; Brigid Hughes, Founding Editor of A Public Space, will be introducing them.
What is a crucial event? How can “fact” be transformed through changes in point of view? Does it work to change name, place, time, etc.? Why is transformation not hiding? In this seminar, we’ll look at these questions and apply them to inspire and improve our writing!
Sallie will be reading from her new book Mending: New and Selected Stories at Bookworks in Albuquerque. More information to come!
For a very nice write up of this event, visit the High Road Artist blog.
The Blue Box: Five Lives in Letters introduces Margaret Haskins, the four times great grandmother of Sallie Bingham. This story begins with Haskin’s capture by the Shawnee Indians in 1778 and recounts her years of captivity in their camp, ending with a fictional reconstruction of her life after she returned to Virginia. Bingham describes how she found the box and the effect that her childhood in Kentucky had on her writing.
Sallie will be participating in the "Night of Literary Feasts" event to benefit the Lexington Public Library. This event is $250 per person for a guaranteed placement with one of your top two author selections or $150 for an unguaranteed placement. To register online, visit:
On Friday, September 21 from 9 - 10:15 I will be on a panel with Rebecca Howell and Crystal Wilkinson to discuss Adrienne Rich and from 3 - 4:15 Naomi Wallace and I will be doing a reading in playwriting.
The Bingham Center will host an evening with author, playwright, teacher and feminist activist Sallie Bingham, who will reflect on 25 years of documenting women’s history at Duke and offer her vision for the Center’s next 25 years, and Rachel Seidman, Associate Director, Southern Oral History Program, at UNC-Chapel Hill and visiting lecturer in Women’s Studies at Duke University, who will give her perspective on Bingham Center contributions to preservation, teaching, and activism.