In Memoriam: Sallie Bingham, 1937-2025

The Rubenstein Library experienced a deep loss on August 6, 2025, when author and activist Sallie Bingham passed. Enormously thoughtful and kind, Bingham was steadfastly dedicated to the groups and causes she cared about, especially women and girls, LGBTQIA communities, artists and writers, land conservation, and special collections and cultural heritage work. A renowned author, playwright, poet, teacher, and feminist activist, Bingham was deeply committed to the power of the written word and the importance of creating organizations that address social issues and promote well-being. Her death was marked by tributes in the New York Times, the Louisville Courier-Journal, and other news outlets.

Sallie Bingham giving a talk in 2009, in the Duke Libraries. Bingham visited the Libraries often to engage with our communities. Photo credit: Eleanor Mills.

Bingham published her first short story in The New Yorker in 1959 and went on to write numerous novels, short story collections, memoirs, and plays. Her fiction often explored the inner lives of women, the weight of family legacy, and the constraints of Southern tradition. With clarity and courage, she brought attention to the power dynamics of gender and class, always centering women’s experiences. Bingham has been praised by critics for her “beautiful language,” “poetic ear” and “precise and observant eye.” In addition to her work as a writer, Bingham worked as a book editor for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, a director of the National Book Critics Circle, and a longtime contributor to the Women’s Project & Productions theater company in New York.

In 1985, Bingham founded the Kentucky Foundation for Women, a groundbreaking organization that promotes positive social change by supporting varied feminist expression in the arts. Bingham’s commitment to preserving and uplifting women’s voices also led to the creation of a women’s history archive at Duke University. In 1988 she endowed a position in what is now known as the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library to coordinate acquisitions, cataloguing, reference, and outreach activities related to materials documenting women and gender. What started out as the work of a single archivist grew into a permanently endowed center within the library, which in 1999 was formally named the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture in her honor. Since then, the Bingham Center has grown into one of the foremost repositories of its kind, dedicated to acquiring, preserving, and providing access to published and unpublished materials that reflect the public and private lives of women throughout history.

We are deeply grateful for Sallie Bingham’s generous support and gracious care, and we offer our sincere condolences to her many friends and family. As we mourn her loss, we also celebrate her remarkable life spent in service of truth, community building, and the creative spirit. We are proud to bear her name and carry on the important work she started so many years ago. In one of her last social media posts Bingham declared that “Our wisdom outlasts kingdoms and democracies and tyrannies. It is for all places, all people, and all times.”