Gil Harrington and Jane Lillian Vance, authors of Morgan Harrington: Murdered and Dead for Good and founders of Help Save the Next Girl, will be at the South County Library on Monday, June 26 at 7:00pm for a special author talk.
Gil Harrington’s life as an oncology nurse and mother of two children disintegrated in 2009 when her 20-year-old daughter never returned home from a concert. In response, Gil created the powerful Help Save the Next Girl foundation.
Throughout the year Gil interviews and keynotes as an incisive inspirational speaker confronting the epidemic of sexual predatory violence. She travels each summer to the deep bush of Zambia, Africa, with Orphan Medical Network International, providing humanitarian aid and wound care to the poorest people on the continent.
Gil’s poems, drawings, and intimate journal entries mix freely into this lyrical triumph of service over anguish, and healing over retaliation. Currently, Gil lives with her husband Dan in Roanoke, Virginia.
For a decade, Jane Lillian Vance offered a Humanities course at Virginia Tech called The Creative Process, in which Morgan Harrington was Jane’s beloved student in 2009. Her art inspired the documentary, A Gift for the Village, and her painting projects in Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Zambia, as well as with Help Save the Next Girl, feature in her recent TEDx talk, Catalytic Compassion.
Jane’s images and essays about the trials of murderer Jesse Matthew help narrate Gil Harrington’s transcendent journey toward justice and healing. Jane is the Vice President of Help Save the Next Girl and currently lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Morgan Harrington: Murdered and Dead for Good features Morgan’s own writing, never released photos, unfiltered diary entries, poetry and drawings, as well as Vance’s unflinching observations from attending the trials of murderer Jesse Matthew.
Join Harrington and Vance at 7:00pm on Monday, June 26 at the South County Library located at 6303 Merriman Road, Roanoke, Virginia. Bring your own book or purchase one on the evening of the event. For more information please, call Darlene Smithwick at (540) 777-8786.
