Kim Edwards
When Art Meets Life
Luncheon Keynote Speaker
University Club, University of Louisville
12:15 p.m.
Photograph by Mark Kidd
Several of Kim’s stories, as well as her novel, grew from the ways in which particular characters intersected with the social and political realities of their times. In this talk, Kim will consider the ways in which contemporary or historical events can inspire fictional accounts, the challenges involved in researching and writing such stories, and the successful weave of fact and fiction. Specifically Kim will look at “A Gleaming in the Darkness,” “The Story of My Life,” and THE MEMORY KEEPER’S DAUGHTER, reading from those works and discussing how they came to be.
Kim Edwards has won numerous awards, including a Whiting Award and the Nelson Algren Award and most recently the Kentucky Literary Award for fiction. She is the author of a collection of short stories, THE SECRETS OF A FIRE KING, which was an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Zoetrope, Anteaus, Story, and The Paris Review and have received a National Magazine Awards for excellence in Fiction and a Pushcart Prize. A graduate of the Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, she currently teaches writing at the University of Kentucky. This is her first novel, which has been chosen as a Barnes and Noble Discover title. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband and daughters.