Actress, Author Sally Field to Speak Saturday in New Orleans

Sally Field is a two-time Academy Award and three-time Emmy Award winning actor, who has portrayed dozens of iconic roles on both the large and small screens. Her extensive film credits include performances in Robert Benson’s Places of the Heart, for which she received both the Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and Martin Ritt’s Norma Rae, receiving not only the Academy Award but also a Golden Globe. She also received Golden Globe nominations for her work in Smokey and the Bandit, Absence of Malice, Kiss Me Goodbye, and Steel Magnolias and received both SAG and BAFTA nominations for her work in Forrest Gump. Other films include Lincoln, An Eye for An Eye, Mrs. Doubtfire, Soapdish, Not Without My Daughter, The End, Hooper, Stay Hungry (her first major film role), and Hello, My Name is Doris. She starred in both Punchline and Murphy’s Romance, which were produced by her production company, Fogwood Films. The session will take place on Saturday, June 23, 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. at the 2018 ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition in New Orleans, LA.

Born in Pasadena, California and raised in a show-business family, Sally Field is one of the most celebrated, beloved and enduring actors of our time, and now she tells her story for the first time in an intimate and haunting literary memoir, In Pieces, available Fall 2018. In her own words, she writes about a challenging and lonely childhood, the craft that helped her find her voice, and a powerful emotional legacy that shaped her journey as a daughter and a mother. With raw honesty and the fresh, pitch-perfect prose of a natural-born writer, and with all the humility and authenticity her fans have come to expect, Field brings readers behind the scenes for not only the highs and lows of her star-studded early career in Hollywood, but deep into the truth of her lifelong relationships including, most importantly, her complicated love for her own mother. Powerful and unforgettable, In Pieces is an inspiring and important account of life as a woman in the second half of the twentieth century.

In 2012, Sally Field was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2015, she was honored by President Obama with the National Medal of Arts. She has served on the Board of Directors of Vital Voices since 2002 and also served on the Board of The Sundance Institute.

This session is sponsored by Hachette Book Group.

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Doris Kearns Goodwin, Presidential Historian, Author to Present

World-renowned presidential historian, public speaker, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, Doris Kearns Goodwin is the author of six critically acclaimed books, including her most recent, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, a dynamic historical portrayal of the first decade during the Progressive era. This was a tumultuous time as the nation was becoming unseamed and reform was in the air. Film and television rights have been acquired by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios for the book, making this her second juncture with Spielberg, as they worked together on “Lincoln,” based in part on Goodwin’s award-winning book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, winner of the Lincoln Prize and the inaugural Book Prize for American History.

In Goodwin’s new book, Leadership: In Turbulent Times, available Fall 2018, she draws upon four of the presidents she has studied most closely – Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights) – to show how they first recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized by others as leaders.

At the age of 24, Goodwin became a White House Fellow and served as an assistant to President Lyndon Johnson during his last year in the White House. She later worked with him in the preparation of his memoirs. Goodwin became a professor at her alma mater, Harvard University where she taught Government, which included a course on the American Presidency. As a young senator, former President Barack Obama, after reading Goodwin’s Wait till Next Year: Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, telephoned her out of the blue requesting to meet to discuss the book – and a friendship was established. During his Presidency, Mr. Obama occasionally invited her, and a few other select presidential historians to the White House to discuss past presidents, their legacies, and on occasion to request counsel. He granted Goodwin an “exit interview” for Vanity Fair as he prepared to leave office that focused on what could be considered his own presidential legacy.

Goodwin’s appearance is sponsored by Simon & Schuster.

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