Writing from Both Sides, Stories from the Santa Fe Trail

Join the History Museum, The Historic Santa Fe Foundation, and the School for Advanced Research for a special event with Dr. Frances Levine, author of Crossings: Women on the Santa Fe Trail, and writer and editor Kate Nelson on Wed., Oct. 22, 5:30 p.m. in the Museum’s auditorium. They will be in conversation about the new book, sharing research on the long-overlooked stories of women and children who traveled the Santa Fe Trail. A reception will follow the talk.

Ticket options are $50 for general admission, or $75 including signed copy of book.

Purchase Tickets Here: Writing from Both Sides, Stories from the Santa Fe Trail - School for Advanced Research

About Crossings: Women on the Santa Fe Trail

The Santa Fe Trail can be viewed as a nation-changing east-to-west trade corridor, but a deeper history lies along its path. In recent and ongoing research, Dr. Frances Levine details the long-overlooked stories of women and children who also traveled the trail. They were teachers and nuns, African Americans and Jewish, captives and orphans, diarists and writers, Army and merchants’ wives. Through marriages, businesses, and educational institutions, they forged a living link between Santa Fe and St. Louis.

About Dr. Frances Levine

Dr. Levine is the author, co-editor or contributor to several award-winning books including Our Prayers Are in This Place: Pecos Pueblo Identity over the Centuries (1999, UNM Press), Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe (2008 MNM Press, with MaryAnne Redding and Krista Elrick), and Telling New Mexico: A New History (2009 MNM Press, with Marta Weigle and Louise Stiver), as well as a chapter in All Trails Lead to Santa Fe (2010 with Gerald Gonzalez, Sunstone Press), Frontier Battles and Massacres: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives (with Ron Wetherington, editors, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2014), and Doña Teresa Confronts the Spanish Inquisition: A Seventeenth Century New Mexican Drama (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2016), which won a Southwest Book Award by the Border Regional Library Association. Crossings just won the New Mexico Book Award in History. Levine was the executive director of the New Mexico History Museum from 2002-2014.

About Kate Nelson

Kansas native Kate Nelson attended a grade school built right next to the Santa Fe Trail. Her- teachers said you could still see the wagon ruts, but even at a young age, she could divine the distance between legend and fact. That skill suited her well in a journalism career initially focused on politics, community, and justice; more recently on history, art, and culture. When Frances Levine hired her as the New Mexico History Museum’s marketing director, neither could predict they would become fast friends and occasional writing partners. Most recently, they collaborated on a time-traveling feature story for New Mexico Magazine that visited women past and present along the trail. You can read it here: Uncovering Women’s Stories on the Santa Fe Trail

This event is in conjunction with School for Advanced research and the New Mexico History Museum, with additional thanks to Barbara and Larry Good.