Brandeis Law alumna to be featured at Kentucky Women's Book Festival

Legal publishing and poetry might seem like two vastly different fields, but for Pat Owen, they're not incompatible.

Owen, a 1977 graduate of the Brandeis School of Law, will be featured at the 11th annual Kentucky Women's Book Festival, March 4, 2017.

She is the author of Crossing the Sky Bridge, a book of poetry inspired by love, loss and the natural world. She began writing poetry after her partner of 30 years, Ellen Ewing, was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. Ewing, a 1972 alumna, is well-known within the Brandeis Law community. The Judge Ellen B. Ewing Foundation provides summer fellowship funding for Brandeis Law students to work in the areas of family law, domestic violence and spouse abuse and HIV/AIDS at Legal Aid.

"It's sort of a switch to go from left brain to right brain," Owen said about moving from a career in legal publishing to life as a poet.

Although she's done readings at bookstores, speaking at a festival will be a first for her. Owen expects to talk about her writing process and how she began writing poetry.

"It's a real honor to be part of the whole thing," she said. "I feel very honored to be included."

Her book was published by Larkspur Press, a small letter-press publisher in Monterey, Kentucky.