Culture
Celebrate Women 2017 Features Orange Is the New Black Author
< < Back toOhio University Lancaster Pickerington’s Celebrate Women conference announced Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison as its 2017 keynote speaker at a public unveiling and reception yesterday.
Now in its 11th year and organized by Ohio University Lancaster faculty, staff, and students, the Celebrate Women Conference aims to bridge women’s relationships in areas of community, university and professions. The conference theme, ‘The Power of YOU: Advocating for Women, Wellness, and Work,’ will focus on presentations by more than twenty speakers, a Celebrate Women luncheon, and opportunities for information booths, continuing education credits, and networking.
“The Celebrate Women conference is a full day of enlightening sessions – in health, business, professional, and social issues for women of all ages,” said Pamela A. Kaylor, Ph.D., Communication Studies/Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies for Ohio University Lancaster. “Ms. Kerman is a perfect fit for the conference and we are thrilled she will serve as keynote speaker.”
Piper Kerman’s best-selling memoir Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison chronicles what the author calls her “crucible experience”—the 13 months she spent in the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. A brief dalliance with drug trafficking while she was in her early twenties sent Kerman to prison ten years later on money laundering charges. In her compelling, moving and often hilarious book, she explores the experience of incarceration and the intersection of her life with the lives of the women she met while in prison: their friendships and families, mental illnesses and substance abuse issues, cliques and codes of behavior.
What has stuck with her the most from her experience, Kerman says, is the power of women’s communities, “the incredible ability of women to step up for each other, and to be resilient and to share their resiliency with other people.” The book also raises provocative questions about the state of criminal justice in America, and how incarceration affects the individual and communities throughout the nation.
The memoir was adapted into a critically acclaimed Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Netflix series of the same name by Jenji Kohan.
Since her release, Kerman has worked tirelessly to promote the cause of prison and criminal justice reform. She works with nonprofits, philanthropies, and other organizations working in the public interest. She has been called as a witness by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights to testify on solitary confinement and women prisoners, and by the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security Committee to testify about the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Kerman has spoken at the White House on re-entry and employment to help honor Champions of Change in the field, as well as the importance of arts in prisons and the unique conditions for women in the criminal justice system. In 2014, she was awarded the Justice Trailblazer Award from John Jay College’s Center on Media, Crime & Justice and the Constitutional Commentary Award from The Constitution Project; the Equal Justice Initiative recognized her as a Champion of Justice in 2015.
The 2017 Celebrate Women Conference is scheduled for Friday, March 17, 2017 at Ohio University Lancaster. Registration and conference details will be available on the conference website. For more information, contact Kaylor at dawes@ohio.edu or 740.681.3372.