Visiting Author - Brad Bigelow - Virginia Faulkner: A Life in Two Acts

Date and Time

• Saturday, Jan 24, 2026  4:30pm - 6pm

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Arts

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Join us on Saturday, January 24th as we welcome writer Brad Bigelow to Lincoln! He will be presenting his upcoming book Virginia Faulkner: A Life in Two Acts. Published by the University of Nebraska Press, this new book tells the story of writer and editor Virginia Falkner. You don't want to miss this fascinating history!

Books are available at Francie & Finch and will be available at the event with a book signing to follow the talk.

About the Book:
Featured writer for the Washington Post at twenty. Author of a hit novel at twenty-one. Coaxed Greta Garbo out of seclusion for a Hollywood party. Ghostwrote the memoirs of New York’s most famous madam, Polly Adler. It’s no wonder Virginia Faulkner was spoken of as the next Dorothy Parker.

But Faulkner also struggled with alcoholism and depression, lost respect for her own work as a writer, and at age forty-two returned to her hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska, unsure what her next move would be. Asked to assemble an anthology to celebrate Nebraska, she joined the University of Nebraska Press and soon found herself fascinated by the challenges of work as an editor. The press, she realized, offered her the opportunity to champion the work of the writer she respected above all others: Willa Cather. And after finding an ideal colleague and life partner in Bernice Slote, Faulkner launched a series of books that helped establish Cather as one of America’s greatest writers.

In Virginia Faulkner: A Life in Two Acts, Brad Bigelow tells Faulkner’s story—one that’s lively, irreverent, and rich in its commitment to literature of lasting importance. Though her own books have since been forgotten, Faulkner left a legacy of achievement and success in American literature against social and personal odds, and her voice and spirit shine forth in the pages of this book.

About the Author:
Brad Bigelow is a writer and editor living in Missoula, Montana. He is the editor of the Recovered Books series for Boiler House Press and has been writing the NeglectedBooks.com website since 2006. With more than six hundred articles, the site celebrates the work of little-known writers like Virginia Faulkner.

Advance Praise for the Book
“Intimidating, brilliant, and scathingly funny, Virginia Faulkner is a true American original. She fled her corn-fed Midwestern childhood in 1928 and reinvented herself as an international sophisticate and renowned wit. . . . Famous for her impeccable taste and stubborn eccentricities, Faulkner masterminded the literary reputations of authors ranging from Polly Adler to Willa Cather, but her own fascinating story has been forgotten until now. Brad Bigelow brings this complex, trailblazing woman back to life and restores her to her rightful place in American history.”—Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age

 

“Virginia Faulkner: A Life in Two Acts is a fascinating tribute to literary obsession. Not only does Brad Bigelow offer a captivating tale of Virginia Faulkner’s mad devotion to Willa Cather; he provides a portrait of how profoundly one scholar, one editor, can amplify one writer’s voice.”—Timothy Schaffert, author of The Titanic Survivors Book Club and The Perfume Thief

 

“I’m a bit embarrassed to confess that I’d never even heard of Virginia Faulkner before I met her in this engrossing biography, and now I wish I could have met her in person.”—Nancy Pearl, author of the best-selling Book Lust and More Book Lust