jackie lyden writer journalistWe’re excited to share the news about our opening speaker for this year’s HippoCamp: A Conference for Creative Nonfiction Writers.

In an era where there’s increased focus on the media and the truth, we’re pleased to welcome former NPR journalist Jacki Lyden to Lancaster, Pa. this summer. With the rise in audio books and explosion of podcasts, we’re also thrilled to hear from someone with more than three decades of experience telling stories on the air.

But she also tells stories on the page. Lyden is also the author of the acclaimed memoir “Daughter of the Queen of Sheba” and has been published in The Atlantic, Granta, and other literary and media outlets.

Previously announced, Nick Flynn will be the Saturday evening keynote at the PA writing conference, and they both join 50+ speakers in this year’s line up.
To learn more about the conference, explore this website. Register by May 15 to get the early-bird rate.
Bio:
Jacki Lyden is an author, former NPR host, public speaker and award-­ winning journalist. Her three decades on NPR established her wide-­ranging interest in the human experience, be it in the Middle East or Middle America. Her work on mental health stories is told from the family members’ perspective, which she chronicled in her acclaimed memoir Daughter of the Queen of Sheba, which the New York Times called “a memoir classic that belongs on the shelf with Angeles Ashes and The Liars Club.” The best-­selling book, translated into nine foreign languages, tells the story of growing up with a bipolar mother who “bequeathed” her Mesopotamia, years before she was a Middle East correspondent for NPR. The memoir was adapted for the screen and has attracted actresses from Meryl Streep to Sarah Paulson and Amy Adams, to play Jacki.

Lyden has written numerous stories in publications like Granta, The Washington Post, the Atlantic and other magazines. She’s received the Dupont-­Columbia award twice for NPR’s work in Afghanistan and Iraq, and has also received the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio and Television for best foreign documentary, covering the deaths of Israeli and Palestinian children. She received the National Mental Health Association Grand Prize for mental health reporting in Montana.

She is a 2017-­18 recipient of the Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. Ms. Lyden is at work on her second memoir, this one around family caregiving.She established a writers’ retreat in Ireland called “Love Comes in at the Eye” with distinguished authors such as Beverly Donofrio and Elizabeth Rosner. In another literary/radio project, she conducted “The National Story Project” with writer Paul Auster on NPR, which also became a NYT bestselling book, “I Thought My Father Was God.”

During her many years with NPR, Ms. Lyden regularly guest hosted nearly all NPR programs, such as All Things Considered and Weekend Edition with Scott Simon, and many others. She reported from many countries, including a series from Iran in 1996, and was the UK correspondent in 1989-­90, until the Iraq war. She has reported from Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Beirut, Jordan, Baghdad, Egypt, Morocco, Kabul and several other conflict zones.

In 2015-­17 she established The Seams podcast and NPR.org/TheSeams, a series and podcast that looked at fashion as a multi-­cultural experience, from The Seminole Tribe of Florida to fifty years of the Ebony Fashion Fair.

She is a popular speaker and interviewer, and points out that now that family caregiving has entered the picture, she is one of 66 million caregivers, a job she tries to do part-­time. Her Washington Post column on this topic was featured by the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving.

She is a graduate of the Christ College for Scholars, Valparaiso University, Indiana. She has also received the Benton Fellowship at the University of Chicago, and an honorary Ph.D. from Valparaiso.

She divides her time between Brooklyn, Washington DC and the family home in Wisconsin.

April 12, 2019 admin 0

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