Finding Lost Voices: Launching Finding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb
A weekly email that brings back the voices of those who have been forgotten or misremembered.
This week is a special issue as next Tuesday marks the publication date for my biography Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb
Ten Facts About Sanora Babb (1907 - 2005)
Sanora Babb grew up in the Panhandle (Red Rock, Oklahoma; Two Buttes, CO; Elkhart, KS; Forgan, OK; and Garden City, KS). She learned to read from the pages of the Denver Post her mother pasted to the walls of their dugout and by reading from the only book their family owned: Adventures of Kit Carson.
Babb’s first essay she wrote in school was called “How to Handle Men.”
Babb’s grandfather, Konkie in front of their dugout with their harvest of broomcorn. Babb started working in newspapers at a very young age. She got her first job as a reporter for the Garden City Herald in Garden City, KS.
Sanora Babb when she graduated high school in Forgan, OK Babb was the valedictorian of her high school class in Forgan, OK, but didn’t receive the honor because a few parents stopped the principal from giving her the award because her father was a gambler.
Babb and her sister, Dorothy In 1929, she asked her father to flip a coin to decide which city she would move to to become a writer: New York or Los Angeles. Los Angeles won. In L.A., Babb was chosen as a delegate for the first Writers’ Congress in New York City. She, the novelist Harry Carlise, and Tillie Olsen drove cross-country squeezed into a one-seat Ford with a cloth top. She met Richard Wright and hundreds of other like-minded leftist writers in New York.
Babb and Tillie Olsen on their cross-country drive to the first Writers’ Conference in New York City. Babb dated and eventually (when it was legal in California) married the Academy-Award-winning Cinematographer James Wong Howe.
Babb and Howe at the Academy Awards Babb volunteered to work for Tom Collins at the Farm Security Administration. She would work with him for eight months between 1938 and1939, helping victims of the Dust Bowl. Collins shared her notes with Steinbeck.
Babb with the people she worked with at the FSA camps Her novel was under contract with Random House, and she planned to publish it in the summer of 1939. However, three weeks before John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, Random House canceled her contract. Her novel Whose Names Are Unknown would not be published until 2004.
Babb and Tom Collins an the FSA Camp Babb was in a writing group with Ray Bradbury for forty years, and they had a caring, supportive friendship.
Babb with her writing group. Babb published her first novel, The Lost Traveler, in 1958 and her memoir, An Owl on Every Post, in 1970.
What you can do to support my book
Purchase a copy here: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/riding-like-the-wind/hardcover
Write an Amazon review (you can write one even if you didn’t purchase your book on Amazon). These make a big difference!
Share about my book on social media (and don’t forget to tag me).
Recommend Riding Like the Wind to your local library.
Choose my book for your book club book. (I'm working on a reading guide today that will be posted here soon!)
Come to one of my events (listed below) and bring a friend! (And don’t forget to say hello!)
Support Finding Lost Voices by becoming a paid subscriber.
Articles and Reviews Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb
”The Woman Who Would Be Steinbeck” by Mark Athitakis
”Review: Biography uncovers lost legacy of woman whose Dust Bowl novel rivaled Steinbeck’s” by Anisse Gross
”Sanora Babb finally gets her time in the spotlight in Sebastopol author’s new book” by Meg Mcconahey
Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb’ by Jonah Raskin
Upcoming Events
October 15 -7:00 PM Vromen’s Bookstore in Pasadena, CA - Iris Jamahl Dunkle in Conversation with The Lost Ladies of Lit Co-hosts Kim Askew and Amy Helmes,
October 16 - 6:00 PM - Iris Jamahl Dunkle reads at Bookmine in Napa.
October 18 - 7:00 PM Iris Jamahl Dunkle reads at Copperfield’s Santa Rosa, CA - Register here.
October 23 - 5:30 PM - Iris Jamahl Dunkle reads at Readers’ Books 130 East Napa Street, Sonoma, CA
October 26 -10:00 AM - 3:30 PM Creative Writing Retreat at Dominican University
Sign up to take the workshop, “Mini Biography as an Act of Revolution, a creative nonfiction workshop with Iris Jamahl Dunkle” and attend my keynote talk, “Taking Back History, One Story at a Time: Why I Write About Forgotten Women's Lives”
October 30 - 7:00 PM - Iris Jamahl Dunkle in conversation with Harry Stecopoulos at Prairie Lights Bookstore, Iowa City, IA
November
November 1 - 6:00 PM 7:30 PM - Catamaran Lit Chat with Iris Jamahl Dunkle - Catamaran Literary Reader - 1050 River St., Studio 118 Santa Cruz, CA 95060
November 7, Oklahoma Center for the Humanities, Tulsa, OK
November 13 - Book Club at Pasadena Heritage
November 18 - The Book Club of California
November 19, 4:30 PM UC Davis Manetti Shrem Museum in conversation with Matthew Stratton
November 20, 5:00 PM UC Berkeley, English Department (Room 300)
November 22 -23, University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK and Author Talk at Full Circle Bookstore, Oklahoma City. OK
December
December 1, 2:00 PM - Iris Jamahl Dunkle in Conversation with Kristen Hanlon at the Alameda Library, Alameda, CA
January 2025
January 24 - Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH
January 25 - Reading with Jan Beatty at White Whale Books in Pittsburgh, PA
January 27 - Iris Jamahl Dunkle in Conversation with Donovan Hohn at Literati in Ann Arbor, MI
January 28 - Iris Jamahl Dunkle at Morgenstern Books, Bloomington, Indiana
February
February 21, Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s talk at New York University, New York, NY
February 26, 6:00 PM Iris Jamahl Dunkle reads at King's English, Salt Lake City, UT
February 27 - Iris Jamahl Dunkle reads at American West Center, Salt Lake City, UT
March
March 5 - The Bill Lane Center for the American West: Stanford, CA
March 13- 5:00 PM Garden City Community College, Kansas
March 14 - 17 Books and Books in Coral Gables, FL and Key West, FL (Exact date TBA)
March 21 - 2:00 PM New York Public Library, New York City
May
May 17 - 5:30 - 7:30 National Steinbeck Center, Salinas, CA
OWL conveys the mystery & magic of the West, without overstatement. Her descriptions of prior living beings in nature still stick in my mind. And one believes that she's telling the truth. These are not Tall Tales. I've never read anything like it elsewhere.
So Sanora wrote AN OWL ON EVERY POST! I've loved that book for years. It was one of my first purchases after deciding to build a library of midwestern and western U.S. women's literature. So looking forward to your book.