2011 Kentucky Women’s Book Festival (KWBF) Features Nationally Recognized Authors with Local Ties

The 5th annual Kentucky Women’s Book Festival will feature nationally acclaimed authors with ties to the local community.

Author and filmmaker Tania James will be the featured keynote luncheon speaker. Her debut novel, Atlas of Unknowns is about sisterhood and deals with the pressures of cultural experiences played out in family life. The novel was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Ms. James grew up in Louisville and now resides in Washington, D.C.

Opening the festival will be Alanna Nash, a journalist, writer and biographer.  Her latest novel, Baby, Let’s Play House:  Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him, is considered the first-ever Elvis book to focus solely on his complex relationships with women. She has written on a variety of topics from music to magic to true crime. She resides in Louisville.

Closing speaker for the day will be author Sena Jeter Naslund, whose recent book Adam & Eve deals with a clash between science and faith. She is a Birmingham, Alabama native who has ties with the University of Louisville, serving as a former director of the Creative Writing Program.  Naslund is currently Writer-in-Residence at U of L and program director of Spalding University’s brief-residency Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Program in Creative Writing. She also resides in Louisville.

There will be additional authors and writers conducting workshop sessions on the ‘nuts & bolts’ of writing and publishing throughout the day.  Workshop sessions are free and open to the public except the keynote luncheon. For a complete list of speakers and workshops, consult the detailed schedule later in this website or call the U of L Women’s Center at 852-8976.

As of 1/24/11, the Festival is being  co-sponsored by the University of Louisville Women’s Center, U of L Libraries, Class Act Federal Credit Union, the U of L Commission on Diversity & Racial Equality (CODRE), the Commission on the Status of Women(COSW) and Women Who Write, Inc.