In Skipton and Boise

A couple of alerts for today, September 14 in Skipton (UK) and Boise (Idaho, US):

Charlotte Brontë: the stories behind the stories
Skipton Library
7.30pm on Wednesday 14 September

In this illustrated talk Sue Newby from the Brontë Parsonage Museum will explore the idea that much of Charlotte Brontë's writing has its origins in events and characters from her own life. Did Charlotte really know of an actual 'mad' wife locked away in an attic, and how far was the passionate, mysterious Mr Rochester inspired by a married Belgian school teacher?

Tickets cost £4 and are available from the library.

For more information and tickets, please contact Skipton library on 01609 534548 or email skipton.library@northyorks.gov.uk. (Via Craven Herald)

Jody Gentian Bower talks about her book Jane Eyre’s Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine StoryRediscovered Books
Boise, Idaho
Wednesday, September 14 at 7 p.m.

About the book: In Jane Eyre’s Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine’s Story, cultural mythologist Jody Gentian Bower looks at novels by women—and some men—as well as biographies of women that tell the story of the Aletis, the wandering heroine. She finds a similar pattern in works spanning the centuries, from Lady Mary Wroth and William Shakespeare in the 1600s to Sue Monk Kidd, Suzanne Collins, and Philip Pullman in the current century, including works by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Kate Chopin, Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Alice Walker, to name just a few. She also discusses myths and folk tales that follow the same pattern.

About Bower: Bower has made her living as a scientific writer and editor since the late 1980s, including a stint at Healthwise, Inc. in Boise in the late 1990s. She now lives in Port Townsend, Washington, where she writes, teaches, and sings with RainShadow Chorale, an auditioned performance choir. She has published many articles and contributed to three other books; Jane Eyre’s Sisters is her first book as solo author. She is currently at work on a college textbook for English composition classes. (Via Idaho Statesman)