Local Authors Needed for Event

The Anna Bixby Women's Center is hosting a two-day Seven Windows/One View event at the Saline County Fairgrounds on Friday, Aug. 18, and Saturday, Aug. 19. As part of the festivities they want to host a local author book fair on Saturday.

Each author will conduct their own sales. The women's center is asking for 10 percent of the sales in lieu of any upfront registration costs. The whole event is an outreach for the center which serves as emergency housing for domestic abuse victims in a seven county area in Southeastern Illinois. They also sponsor and conduct numerous other anti-domestic violence awareness and prevention programs.

Authors interested in participating should contact Diane Taborn at the center at 618-252-8380 and provide a 50 to 60 word description of their works and themselves as soon as possible because they are starting work on a brochure and advertising. Diane can also be reached by e-mail at abixby (at) accessus.net.

As a historical note the center is named for Anna Bigsby, the patron saint for battered women in southeastern Illinois. A mid-19th Century midwife who lived in Hardin County Anna was chased off of a bluff by her second husband. That husband Eson Bigsby believed Anna had buried the fortune of her first husband out in the woods. Anna apparantly survived the fall, which by my research likely took place around the time of the Civil War.

"Dr. Anna" is also remembered for "discovering" the plant that caused milk sickness in cows and humans who drank the milk from sick cows. She was supposedly shown the plant by a woman folklore only recalls as "Aunt Shawnee". For more historical information check out .