The views and opinions expressed in this presentation do not necessarily reflect those of the Alabama Department of Archives and History.
On Thursday, May 30, at 12:00pm CT, the ADAH hosted a book talk on Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author, given by Jennifer Horne.
Horne's book tells the story of Sara Mayfield, a brilliant but troubled author and inventor who struggled against the conventions of gender, class, family, and ultimately of sanity, yet survived to define a creative life of her own. Throughout her life, Mayfield kept journals, wrote fiction, and produced thousands of letters while nursing the ambition that had driven her since childhood: to write and publish books. In Odyssey of a Wandering Mind, Horne draws on years of research and an intimate understanding of this vast personal archive to sensitively render Mayfield’s struggle to move through the world as the person she was-and her ultimate success in surviving to define the terms of her story.
Horne served as the twelfth Poet Laureate of Alabama from 2017-2021. Raised in Arkansas and a longtime resident of Alabama, Horne is a writer and editor of prose, poetry, and fiction who has taught creative writing in a variety of settings, in university, conference, and prison classrooms, abroad and close to home.
This program is sponsored by the Alabama Humanities Alliance and the Friends of the Alabama Archives.