Category: Jennifer

My Memories: Sunday Silence v. Easy Goer (1989)

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sundaysilence.jpg
Sunday Silence

By early 1989, horse racing had dug itself deep into my heart, the sport destined to define my life in one way or another. At the tender age of twelve, I had been writing letters to institutions like the National Museum of Racing, seeking the information that my local libraries were woefully bereft of, and creating my own cast of characters that were pursuing the sport’s greatest heights in a handwritten novel housed in one of my old school notebooks. I was hooked and bereft of opportunities to share the enthusiasm for the upcoming Triple Crown campaign, but I didn’t let that stop me from being parked in front of the television each Saturday.

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My Memories: Winning Colors (1988)

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If you ask any horse racing fan, they can tell you the moment that solidified their love of the sport. Perhaps it’s Secretariat “moving like a tremendous machine” in the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Maybe it’s catching a day of racing with a relative when they were kids. It could even be a book or a movie that captured their imagination. For me, that moment was the 1988 Kentucky Derby and the beautiful roan filly that brought home the roses that day.

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Come & See Me!

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I am a guest blogger this week over at Ashley O’Melia’s blog on writing:

Quixotic Undertakings or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Write Nonfiction – Guest Post by Jennifer Kelly

Thanks, Ashley, for the chance to talk about this genre after years of writing both as an academic and a fiction writer.

How I Got Here

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blackstallioncoverIt all started with a book. This book, to be precise.

I suppose that’s how stories like mine often start, with a seminal event: a book, an image, something small. Something that might not mean anything to anyone else at that moment, but, to you, changes everything.

My teacher, Ms. Scott, read The Black Stallion out loud to my fifth-grade class that fall. The clouds of time obscure the specifics, but I remember it had to be the fall because another seminal moment happened about the same time. I had our television to myself on a Saturday, a rare treat indeed, and, as I flipped channels, I saw horses congregating on a dirt oval, entering the gate, and flying like lightning down the track. Entranced, I watched what had to have been an afternoon’s worth of racing, unable to catch names, but nevertheless addicted. (Later, I figured out it was the 1987 Breeder’s Cup.)

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