AN EVENING WITH HONOR MOORE.
Having told the sad, extraordinary story of her maternal grandmother, the painter Margarett Sargent, in “The White Blackbird,” Moore offers a painfully honest memoir of her father, Paul Moore, a former Episcopal bishop of the diocese of New York, in "The Bishop's Daughter."

Paul Moore was educated at St. Paul 's and Yale and distinguished himself in battle as a marine on Guadalcanal during WWII. He fathered nine children by his first wife, the vivacious Jenny McKean; and became an activist in the liberal social movements of the 1950s and '60s. He also had numerous clandestine affairs with men. While Paul's bisexuality did little harm to his professional career, it took a heavy emotional toll on his family, notably Jenny, who up to her death from cancer at age 51 confided to only a few intimates the underlying cause of the unhappiness in her marriage. The author, a poet and playwright, draws on letters between her parents, the reminiscences of friends (including a male lover of her father's) and her own experiences as her parents' oldest child coming of age in the '60s to create an indelible portrait of a charismatic religious leader who could be insensitive or even cruel to those who loved him most. At the dramatic heart of this engrossing family chronicle is the ultimately triumphant struggle of the daughter, who suffered her own sexual confusion and years of therapy, to reconstruct her father's personal history in an effort to understand his behavior and thereby forgive.


Running time: TBA
Recommended for ages TBA







ABOUT HONOR MOORE.

“The Bishop’s Daughter,” Honor Moore’s 2008 memoir, was released in paperback (May 2009) along with a reissue of her 1996 biography, “The White Blackbird, A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent by Her Granddaughter.” “The Bishop's Daughter” was named an Editor's Choice by the New York Times, a "Favorite Book of 2008" by the Los Angeles Times and was chosen by the National Book Critics Circle as part of their "Good Reads" recommended reading list. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In April 2009, Library of America published Poems from the Women's Movement, an anthology edited by Honor Moore.

She is the author of three collections of poems: Red Shoes, Darling, and Memoir, and her play Mourning Pictures, was produced on Broadway and published in The New Women’s Theatre: Ten Plays by Contemporary American Women, which she edited.

ABOUT THE LITERARY SERIES.

Whidbey Island Center for the Arts and the Hedgebrook retreat for women writers have partnered to create a program that brings together writers and book-lovers. The Literary Series offers intimate conversations with bestselling Hedgebrook authors and a chance to see local artists bring excerpts of the authors’ works to life in short, staged readings.

Stacie Burgua (WICA Executive Director), Amy Wheeler (Hedgebrook Executive Director), Deana Duncan (WICA Production Director), Vito Zingarelli (Hedgebrook Residency Director), Jason Dittmer (WICA Director of Marketing), M. Louise McKay (Hedgebrook Director of Donor Relations & Fund Development)


_____