A SPECIAL SCREENING WITH SILAS HOUSE
Award-winning Kentucky author Silas House will introduce the film and conduct a Q&A immediately following the screening.
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"Parmet’s strong script and surety behind the camera navigates the audience through this complicated story of religion and sexuality, patriarchy and power, brought to eerily accurate life by the ensemble of excellent actors." — The Wrap
Seventeen-year-old Jem Starling struggles to define her place within her fundamentalist Christian community in rural Kentucky. Even her greatest joy of dancing with the church group is tempered by worry that her actions are sinful and she is caught between a burgeoning awareness of her own sexuality and her religious devotion. With the return of Owen, an enigmatic youth pastor, Jem soon finds herself attracted to his worldliness and charm. Slowly, he draws her into a dangerous relationship that could upend their entire community.
ABOUT SILAS HOUSE
Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels (Clay's Quilt, A Parchment of Leaves, The Coal Tattoo, Eli the Good, Same Sun Here, and his most recent, Lark Ascending, which was a Booklist Editors' Choice and is the winner of the 2023 Southern Book Prize and the 2023 Nautilus Book Award). Four of his plays have been produced. He is also the author of the 2009 book of creative nonfiction Something's Rising (with co-author Jason Kyle Howard). In 2022 he was the recipient of the Duggins Prize, the largest award for an LGBTQ writer in the nation. The same year he was named Appalachian of the Year in a nationwide poll. In 2023 he was inducted as the Poet Laureate of Kentucky for 2023-2025.
His writing has appeared recently in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, Garden & Gun, The New York Times, Oxford American, Ecotone, Tri-Quarterly, and many more of the country's leading publications. House is a former commentator for NPR's "All Things Considered" and is the executive producer and one of the subjects of the documentary Hillbilly, winner of the LA Film Festival's Documentary Prize and the Foreign Press Association's Media Award; the film ran on Hulu, where it was seen by millions of viewers, and is now available to stream on all platforms. His 2018 novel Southernmost is currently in pre-production as a feature film.