Author Talk: Nina Sankovitch on 'Not Your Founding Father'

Event Details

Acclaimed author Nina Sankovitch returns to The Westport Library to present her newest book, Not Your Founding Father: How a Nonbinary Minister Became America's Most Radical Revolutionary. 

Alongside moderator Bruce McGuirk, Nina will explore the fascinating history of one of foundational America's most radical figures, the Public Universal Friend.

Copies of the book will be available for sale and signing at the event.

This event is presented in partnership with Westport's America 250 Committee.

About the Book

A thrilling celebration of a forgotten early American renegade, Not Your Founding Father reconsiders just how radical the American experiment could have been.

Early in the morning of October 9, 1776 — in the small farming community of Cumberland, Rhode Island, in a house surrounded by cherry trees — 23-year-old Jemima Wilkinson died, and the Public Universal Friend was born.

Old Cherry Wilkinson’s children had already gained a reputation for scandal. Two of his boys had been dismissed from the local Quaker meeting for joining the colonial militia, and one of the girls was expelled for having a baby out of wedlock. Now, here was another Wilkinson child, riding about the countryside, claiming to be a genderless messenger of God.

Yet something about the Public Universal Friend set war-ravaged New England ablaze. The young minister seemed to embody the possibilities offered by the new nation, especially the right to total self-determination. To authorities, however, the minister was “the devil in petticoats,” a threat to the men who sought to keep America’s power for themselves.

And so the Public Universal Friend ventured west to create an Eden on the frontier, a place where everyone would have the right to not only life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness, but also peace and shared prosperity. But into every Eden comes a snake. And soon, financial scams, contested wills, adultery, plagiarism, allegations of murder, and murmurs of another war with England would threaten to destroy this new American utopia.

About the Author

Nina Sankovitch is the author of several nonfiction books, including American Rebels and The Lowells of Massachusetts. She has written for the New York Times, the Huffington Post as a contributing blogger, and was formerly a judge for The Book of the Month Club. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, Sankovitch grew up in Evanston, Illinois, and currently lives in Connecticut with her family.

Nina is the acclaimed author of the memoir Tolstoy and the Purple Chair and several works of popular history, including Not Your Founding Father. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Vogue.