Sallie Bingham is a writer, teacher, feminist activist, and philanthropist.
Sallie’s first novel was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1961; she has since published six additional novels and the well-known family memoir, Passion and Prejudice (Knopf, 1989). Her forthcoming book, The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke, will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on April 7, 2020.
She is founder of the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which published The American Voice, and the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University.
Sallie's Latest
What Was Cut
I suppose it’s a stretch—but then what is the point of writing without stretching?—but I think if Doris Duke had known about Julian Abele’s work, she would have admired him and regretted that during his life time, he was never given his due....
Votes for Women
In the middle of all the horrors in the U.S. Capitol, we need to remember that much more significant events are happening....
It Takes a Village..
Since I've never lived in a village, this statement, made by Hilary Clinton a while ago, never had much meaning for me until a now....
Firebrand in the Trojan Horse Part Two
Sometimes the Trojan Horse is actually a country or some part of a country in the grip of intolerance....
Firebrand in the Trojan Horse and the Half Step Strategy
I've had the singular good fortune to meet this past week a most remarkable young woman, Mara Zepeda....
New Mexican Women Claimed the Right to Vote Almost One Hundred Years Ago
We are at a curious moment today, in terms of suffrage and of women's rights generally....
Dancing for the New Year
I'll be dancing in the New Year—out with the old, in with the new, and hope springing eternal....
The Indignities of Age
I think I'd rather fall down in the street, which would be easy to do today in snowy, icy Santa Fe—at its most beautiful, and, like everything beautiful, somewhat treacherous....
Christmas Eve in Santa Fe
The ritual of planting candles to light the way to church for midnight mass on Christmas Eve was brought first to Mexico by the conquistadores....
The Silver Swan
What Was Cut
I suppose it’s a stretch—but then what is the point of writing without stretching?—but I think if Doris Duke had known about Julian Abele’s work, she would have admired him and regretted that during his life time, he was never given his due....
The Next Step
How to live on nothing is a question the publishers have not condescended to consider....
Celebrities
These days if a writer is smitten with the idea of writing a new book—a new analysis—of any supposedly well-known person, the obstacles to her research will be enormous....
Death of Ten Thousand Pricks
Scheduled to be published in August, 2018, The Silver Swan is now delayed till sometime in 2019....
I Want It to Be Said
By now we all know that the discrimination that afflicts one group afflicts all of us....
Doris Duke: Love, Sex, Power and Money
Does it matter that she never found her match in terms of money, status and achievement?...
I Didn’t Sing for a Year
I remember being amazed when my young granddaughters and their friends listened, apparently unperturbed, to hip hop verses that demonize or degrade women....
Music Hath Charms
I grew up with almost no music at all. Music, after all, is not words and only words counted in that world....
Doris Duke
What Was Cut
I suppose it’s a stretch—but then what is the point of writing without stretching?—but I think if Doris Duke had known about Julian Abele’s work, she would have admired him and regretted that during his life time, he was never given his due....
Legacy of Harm
Doris Duke must at least have wondered if her generosity, in all its forms, could ever compensate for the destructive effects of nicotine addiction. ...
Caught in the Act
One of the most notable differences between women and men in public life is we seem to know better how to avoid scandal....
To Be of Use: The Lisa Unger Baskin Collection
A great collection is always based on a passion. It is not random. It grows from a strong root....
Death of Ten Thousand Pricks
Scheduled to be published in August, 2018, The Silver Swan is now delayed till sometime in 2019....
Doris Duke: Love, Sex, Power and Money
Does it matter that she never found her match in terms of money, status and achievement?...
I Didn’t Sing for a Year
I remember being amazed when my young granddaughters and their friends listened, apparently unperturbed, to hip hop verses that demonize or degrade women....
Happy Birthday, Doris
Sometimes a choice of a name without family connotations means an attempt to break loose from the past....
Writing
What Was Cut
I suppose it’s a stretch—but then what is the point of writing without stretching?—but I think if Doris Duke had known about Julian Abele’s work, she would have admired him and regretted that during his life time, he was never given his due....
The Third Fire
Activists like me who have spent decades working in various fields for social justices are, I think, right to assume that this new young militarism is drawing on our work of many decades....
Changing My Mind
Seldom has a book caused me to change my mind... but D.H. Lawrence's Sea and Sardinia changed me....
Reading Toni Morrison in China
Morrison’s raw courage in confronting and describing the effects of incest, racism, and the tragedy of women forced into its confines will be with me always....
Children in Church
They made no noise, having been warned beforehand, and perhaps silenced by the the powerful male voices of the priests and the bellowing of the organ. But they moved. Oh, how they moved......
Legacy of Harm
Doris Duke must at least have wondered if her generosity, in all its forms, could ever compensate for the destructive effects of nicotine addiction. ...
Women
Votes for Women
In the middle of all the horrors in the U.S. Capitol, we need to remember that much more significant events are happening....
Firebrand in the Trojan Horse Part Two
Sometimes the Trojan Horse is actually a country or some part of a country in the grip of intolerance....
Firebrand in the Trojan Horse and the Half Step Strategy
I've had the singular good fortune to meet this past week a most remarkable young woman, Mara Zepeda....
New Mexican Women Claimed the Right to Vote Almost One Hundred Years Ago
We are at a curious moment today, in terms of suffrage and of women's rights generally....
Exquisite Aloneness
There is an avidity, even an arrogance, and a superb energy I sometimes detect in those who live alone......
Maligned Because She Is Different
The public shaming of Hill is yet another example of the hypocrisy of our culture, which pretends to respect or even worship difference, but is deeply and actively hostile to it....
Dead Girls
Except for so-called celebrities, or criminals, we are all forgotten within few years of our deaths....
Some Remarkable Women
I give you several women who have been seen as remarkable; they stand for a multitude of others who through timing, luck or geography are never given the accolades they deserve....
New Mexico
Votes for Women
In the middle of all the horrors in the U.S. Capitol, we need to remember that much more significant events are happening....
It Takes a Village..
Since I've never lived in a village, this statement, made by Hilary Clinton a while ago, never had much meaning for me until a now....
Firebrand in the Trojan Horse and the Half Step Strategy
I've had the singular good fortune to meet this past week a most remarkable young woman, Mara Zepeda....
Dancing for the New Year
I'll be dancing in the New Year—out with the old, in with the new, and hope springing eternal....
The Indignities of Age
I think I'd rather fall down in the street, which would be easy to do today in snowy, icy Santa Fe—at its most beautiful, and, like everything beautiful, somewhat treacherous....
Christmas Eve in Santa Fe
The ritual of planting candles to light the way to church for midnight mass on Christmas Eve was brought first to Mexico by the conquistadores....
Rich Kids
New Mexico has been a blessing for me, which may explain (but not excuse) the fact that I had very little idea of the dire condition of many of our children....
Dogs of Santa Fe
We love dogs, we spoil dogs, sometimes we give dogs the love we can no longer afford to give human beings, after so many losses and disappointments....
Changing My Mind
Seldom has a book caused me to change my mind... but D.H. Lawrence's Sea and Sardinia changed me....
Ode to Cerrillos
How blessed I am to leave near a little spot in the desert that deserves, and is given, its very own ode....
Kentucky
Sometimes It Takes a While
Several decades ago, I became aware of the work and life of Enid Yandell, a Kentucky-born, Paris educated sculptor whose statues I used to see at various ceremonial points in Louisville. This early twentieth-century woman artist, although acclaimed in her time, seemed to be forgotten. Yandell was one of a group of talented women artists ...
18 Favorites of 2018
I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2018, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....
Teaching Girls
A small school in a southern city where girls were usually curbed physically or mentally, the Louisville Collegiate School for Girls and its teachers did not deal in... limits. My years there started me on my way as a writer....
My Mother’s Cookbook
I did make some progress... although probably my greatest accomplishment was mayonnaise made in a blender....
Spring Planting
The Horsetooth Corn will grow vigorously to remind us all that fertility, growth and abundance is still possible....
A Few of My Favorite Things
I am particularly blessed in these special places that seem to have come into my life by chance or luck but are in fact the material manifestations of prayer....
17 Favorites of 2017
As this year comes to a close (some might say thankfully), I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2017, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....
My Family
Dancing for the New Year
I'll be dancing in the New Year—out with the old, in with the new, and hope springing eternal....
And It Does Go On
I am devoutly grateful for the lives of Will's two older brothers who have mourned him with me and yet managed to go on....
The Secret Bunker
A big resort in the mountains of West Virginia, called The Greenbrier, figured often in my great-grandmother Sallie's tales of her girlhood in Richmond....
18 Favorites of 2018
I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2018, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....
The Mustard Seed
As a child, I planted seeds every spring and knew how likely it was that, when I forgot to water them, they would never spring from the dry earth....
My Mother’s Cookbook
I did make some progress... although probably my greatest accomplishment was mayonnaise made in a blender....
Apples
Like the medieval desert mendicants, holy men who lived their lives in remote caves and were sometimes fed by ravens, Will had long ago lost any interest in possessions, or any taste for food....
17 Favorites of 2017
As this year comes to a close (some might say thankfully), I've once again chosen my most popular posts of 2017, based on visits, comments, Tweets and Facebook likes....