Creative Lives Intersect through Art and Culture

At impor­tant points in their lives, Sallie Bingham and Bruce McBroom each made a life-changing deci­sion to move to New Mexico. Their jour­neys were dif­fer­ent, but their destination—Santa Fe—was the same. Now full-time res­i­dents, their paths may have never con­verged but for one thing: each recently joined The Circles, a Museum of New Mexico Foundation mem­ber­ship group whose sup­port pro­vides sus­tain­able futures for our muse­ums. These are their stories.

by Carmella Padilla

Sallie Bingham: A Creative Place to Land

In 1991, after 40 years as a critically-acclaimed author, Sallie Bingham was divorced with three grown sons and in search of “a nur­tur­ing place to start over.” Her ground­break­ing work had amassed prizes and attracted pub­lish­ers before she even earned a col­lege degree. Still, she says, “Early suc­cess can be a mixed blessing.”

The daugh­ter of a Louisville, Kentucky, news­pa­per owner and pub­lisher whose fam­ily had made its for­tune in com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Bingham’s writ­ing flour­ished under her father’s encour­age­ment. Though her mother had worked in jour­nal­ism, Bingham saw her only option in the field on the soci­ety page. Instead, by the 1950s at Boston’s Radcliffe College, she was hon­ing a more fem­i­nist lit­er­ary voice and per­spec­tive that is a hall­mark of much of her work. Her story, “Winter Term,” a can­did account of Radcliffe College girls hav­ing sex with Harvard University boys, won Harvard’s dis­tin­guished Dana Reed Prize, which had never been given to a woman, and a guest edi­tor­ship at Mademoiselle, a posi­tion pre­vi­ously held by Sylvia Plath.

A three-book con­tract with Houghton Mifflin led to Bingham’s first novel in 1961. It also launched the New York lit­er­ary life she had dreamed of, but whose social con­ven­tions she ulti­mately despised. “I didn’t get why I should go sit in that hor­ri­ble dark hole of a restau­rant called Elaine’s, or why I should go to George Plimpton’s cock­tail par­ties,” she says. “It was a gentleman’s busi­ness, mostly white men pub­lish­ing white men.”

Bingham’s suc­cess con­tin­ued nonethe­less as she pub­lished pro­lif­i­cally while jug­gling mar­riage and chil­dren. But with the social upheaval of the 1960s, Bingham felt New York clos­ing in. She returned to Kentucky and began a new chap­ter of life as a thriv­ing play­wright. Her work cap­tured the beauty and com­plex­ity of Southern soci­ety, with women’s issues an ongo­ing theme. She used her suc­cess to pro­duce plays by women writ­ers and direc­tors and to cre­ate the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which has sup­ported work by fem­i­nist women artists for 25 years.

In 1989 came Bingham’s Pride and Prejudice, a mem­oir she says was “writ­ten in blood,” and that Gloria Steinem her­alded as “a major step toward fem­i­nist change and democ­racy.” The book revealed deep-seated secrets about the Bingham fam­ily and the fall of their news empire. Two years later, Bingham sought refuge in Santa Fe. It was, she says, “a cre­ative place to land.”

Today at an east­side Santa Fe tea­house, Bingham speaks with a warm south­ern lilt as she describes how, despite the ever-changing world of pub­lish­ing, New Mexico remains a stim­u­lat­ing, sup­port­ive place to write. Her exten­sive bib­li­og­ra­phy now includes four nov­els, five short story col­lec­tions, three poetry col­lec­tions, a mem­oir, and numer­ous plays. “I have a stub­born con­vic­tion about what I write,”she says. “Without small pub­lish­ers, book groups, and a great com­mu­nity of read­ers, I wouldn’t manage.”

She cites her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Museum Shops’ New Mexico Women Author’s Book Festival as a high­light of the past two years. She recently joined The Circles to engage in other museum-related activ­i­ties. “I’m very proud of what the Museum Foundation does,” she says. “Our muse­ums are remark­able, and the Circles events are always inspiring.”

Bingham’s next short story col­lec­tion, Mending: New and Selected Stories, will be released by Sarabande Books in October. She will read from the book at the New Mexico Women Author’s Book Festival on October 9. Still in progress is The Blue Box, a non­fic­tion book based on a col­lec­tion of fam­ily let­ters writ­ten between 1820 and 1931. In part, the book tells the story of Bingham’s gre­gar­i­ous mater­nal grand­mother, who failed as a writer in the 1950s—just as Bingham was begin­ning her lit­er­ary ascent.

“She once told me she would have been a suc­cess­ful writer, but she had seven chil­dren instead,” Bingham says. “She didn’t regret it, but she made her point clear. I think she would be proud.”

This arti­cle appeared in the Summer 2011 edi­tion of El Palacio mag­a­zine, the mem­ber mag­a­zine of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation.