This program will be held outdoors on the Library Lawn on 4th Street. Bring your low-back chairs and blankets, and please practice social distancing. Face coverings will be required for the duration of the program. A book signing with Chapter One will follow.
Join us for an evening with former Hemingway Writer-In-Residence, Naomi McDougall Jones, who’ll discuss her new book, The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood. The new book is a brutally honest look at the systemic exclusion of women in film—an industry with massive cultural influence—and how, in response, women are making space in cinema for their voices to be heard.
Informed by the journey of her own career; by interviews with others throughout the film industry; and by cold, hard data, Jones deconstructs the casual, commonplace sexism rampant in Hollywood that has kept women out of key roles for decades. She also details the growing women-driven revolution in filmmaking—sparked by streaming services, crumbling distribution models, direct-to-audience access via innovative online platforms, and outside advocacy groups—which has enabled women to build careers outside the traditional studio system.
Naomi McDougall Jones is an award-winning actress, writer, producer, and women in film activist. She was also a 2019 Hemingway Writer-In-Residence with The Community Library, where she worked on the manuscript for this book and an upcoming feature film. Naomi grew up in Aspen, Colorado and attended Cornell University before graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Naomi has been a vocal advocate for bringing gender parity to film, both on and off screen. She has spoken at film festivals and conferences around the world and written extensively on this subject.
She has written, produced and starred in two feature films, Imagine I’m Beautiful (2014), and Bite Me (2019). Both films received rave reviews in screenings across the country and were shown at The Community Library in 2019. She is currently at work on her third feature screenplay, Hammond Castle, a magical realism film that explores themes of identity, legacy and gender through a modern-day seven-month pregnant woman’s unexpected interaction with the brilliant, eccentric and deceased inventor John Hays Hammond, Jr. Naomi and a cast of local actors performed a public reading of the draft script during her 2019 residency.
