BY KAREN BOSSICK
Naomi McDougall Jones, an American actress and film producer, will discuss her new book tonight during a presentation outside the Community Library.
Jones will discuss “The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood” at 6 p.m. tonight—Wednesday, Sept. 30—on the Library Lawn on 4th Street in Ketchum. Attendees are invited to bring low-back chairs or blankets and socially distance. Face masks will be required.
No registration is required to attend. A book signing will follow.
Jones’ book is billed as a brutally honest look at the systemic exclusion of women in film. It examines how women are striving for their voices to be heard. And it focuses on tangible solutions for a more inclusive and vibrant cinema.
“Naomi’s work is an urgent call to rebuild the film industry so that more stories are heard, particularly those of women who have been left out of Hollywood’s system,” said Martha Williams, the programs and education manager at the library. “If you don’t already care about this issue, you will after hearing Naomi speak.”
Naomi McDougall Jones and her husband violinist Stephen McDougall Jones were the first residents of the new Hemingway Writer-in-Residence program during the fall of 2019. She spent that time completing the manuscript for “The Wrong Kind of Women,” and she presented a work-in-progress reading of her new screenplay “Hammond Castle.”
Stephen McDougall Jones presented a concert at the library during that time.
Williams said the library is thrilled to welcome Naomi back to the community to share her work.
“At the inception of the residency program, we imagined each resident returning throughout their career and staying connected with our community. Naomi is helping us to accomplish this goal…to bring writers to our community and to build lasting relationships that promote creativity and conversation in the Wood River Valley,” she said.
Naomi McDougall Jones also appeared at the 2019 Alturas Institute’s Conversations with Exceptional Women, which screened portions of her second feature film “Bite Me,” a romantic comedy about a vampire and the IRS agent who audits her that premiered at the Cinequest Film Festival. Her first feature film, which she also wrote, produced and starred in, was the 12-time award-winning “Imagine I’m Beautiful,” a drama about a woman who finds solace with her troubled roommate after her mother’s death.
“The Dark Pieces,” a pilot she wrote, is in development for television in Canada after being named on the 2016 WriteHer List as one of the top 16 unproduced pilots by a female screenwriter.
She is the founder of The 51 Fund, a private equity fund dedicated to financing films by female filmmakers. Her TED Talk, “What It’s Like to be a Woman in Hollywood,” can be seen on TED.com
LIBRARY ANNOUNCES A NEW WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE
The Community Library will welcome Mary Pauline Lowry, author of “The Roxy Letters,” on Oct. 5. She will lead a workshop for creative nonfiction during her residency.