Bestselling author Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor will co-deliver the commencement address at Scripps College on Sunday, May 16, 2010. Kidd authored The Secret Life of Bees, a novel that remained on The New York Times bestselling list for more than two and a half years.
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Bees, Kidd’s first novel, has sold more than 6 million copies and has been published in 35 countries. Awarded the 2004 Book Sense Paperback Book of the Year, it was also nominated for the Orange Prize in England and was chosen as Good Morning America’s Read This! Book Club pick. Taught widely in high school and college classrooms, Bees has been adapted for the stage by The American Place Theater and was made into a movie by Fox Searchlight in 2008. The film won the People’s Choice and NAACP Image Awards for Best Picture.
Kidd’s second novel, The Mermaid Chair, has sold nearly 2 million copies since its publication in 2005. Mermaid reached the #1 spot on The New York Times bestseller list and remained on the hardcover and paperback lists for nine months. Winner of the 2005 Quill Award for General Fiction, the novel has been translated into 24 languages and was produced as a television movie by Lifetime.
Kidd is also the author of three highly regarded spiritual memoirs: God’s Joyful Surprise (1988), When the Heart Waits (1990) and The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (1996), her groundbreaking work in the field of feminine spirituality and feminist theology.
Mother and daughter recently published the dual memoir Traveling with Pomegranates (2009), which chronicles Kidd and Taylor’s travels together. Pomegranates has appeared on numerous bestseller lists, including The New York Times bestsellers list.
Kidd is a graduate of Texas Christian University. She serves on the board of advisors for Poets & Writers, Inc. and for Low Country Initiative for the Literary Arts (LILA). She is Writer in Residence at The Sophia Institute in Charleston, South Carolina. Kidd lives with her husband Sanford Kidd in Charleston.
Ann Kidd Taylor is a graduate of Columbia College. She has written personal essays for Skirt! Magazine in Charleston where she lives with her husband and son. Traveling with Pomegranates is her first book.