SALLIE BINGHAM

SALLIE BINGHAM
Camila Motta
Sarah Montague Bingham, known to all as Sallie, died at her Santa Fe home on August 6th, 2025, after a brief illness. She was 88. Sallie was a committed writer, and a well-regarded author of numerous books, short stories, and plays. She was also an ardent feminist, a philanthropist, and a supporter of the arts and of civic causes.
Sallie was born in 1937 in Louisville, Kentucky, where her family was a major force in the community, publishing both The Courier-Journal and The Louisville Times newspapers. Under the family's leadership, the newspapers won several Pulitzer Prizes. Bingham attended Louisville Collegiate School, then Radcliffe College before her 1958 marriage to Harvard graduate A. Whitney Ellsworth, publisher of The New York Review of Books. After their divorce, she married Wall Street lawyer Michael Iovenko in 1965. After her second divorce, she married Timothy C. Peters of Louisville in 1983, whom she divorced in 1990.
Sallie's career as a writer began with her first novel, After Such Knowledge, which was published in 1961. Numerous plays, novels, non-fiction books, and short stories followed. In 1977, she returned to Louisville as book editor at The Courier-Journal. During her career, she was published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, the Ladies' Home Journal, and Redbook. Sallie's short stories have been collected in five books, including Transgressions in 2002, and the upcoming How Daddy Lost His Ear from Turtle Point Press. She wrote four memoirs, Passion and Prejudice, The Blue Box, Three Lives in Letters, and Little Brother in which she delineated her younger brother's untimely death and the events surrounding it.
Sallie wrote nine plays, several with provocative subject matter, such as In the Presence, based on a book by a famed civil rights worker, Anne McCarty Braden, The Awakening, an adaptation of a novel by Kate Chopin, A Dangerous Personality, about the life of Helena Blavatsky, founder of the mystical religious movement known as Theosophy, Couvade, a play in which a male actor gives birth on stage, Treason, about the controversial poet and exile Ezra Pound, and Paducah, presented on Broadway with Tammy Grimes in the lead role. Sallie was a co-founder of the Women's Project in New York City, the nation's oldest and largest company dedicated to producing and promoting plays written and directed by women. She co-founded Santa Fe Stages in the 1990's, and was committed to fostering the arts in New Mexico.
Sallie also published seven novels, three books of poetry, and two non-fiction books, The Silver Swan: In Search of Doris Duke, (2020, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Taken by the Shawnee, published last year by Turtle Point Press, about Margaret Erskine, Sallie's ancestor, who was kidnapped by and lived with the native tribe in 1779. Several of her works were clearly inspired by her own life, a life that underwent complicated troubles with and among her famed family. In the play Milk of Paradise, two children are lost, their lives mislaid by their adult family. In the play Hopscotch, four Kentucky women wrestle with the truth. Sallie's works were included in many anthologies, including Best American Short Stories.
Sallie's honors include nomination for the O. Henry Prize, as well as fellowships at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others. In 2023, she won the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize for, "What I Learned from Fat Annie." She endowed the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, part of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Sallie kept an active blog at www.salliebingham.com, chronicling her life and philosophy.
Sallie was celebrated in print for her "elegant prose and unflinching voice," and has been characterized as possessed of a "perceptive mind, [with a] sharp tongue, and fearless in sharing her opinions." Sallie wrote with passion, clarity, and purpose, but she was not one to be limited to one interest or means of expression. She led efforts in environmental preservation, women's education, and women's rights. Sallie taught writing workshops across the country, leading one in Taos only days before she took ill.
In Santa Fe, Sallie will be remembered as a dedicated member of The Church of the Holy Faith (Episcopal), for her generous support of the Santa Fe Opera, the Desert Chorale, Theater Grottesco, Searchlight New Mexico, Truchas Services Center, Green Fire Times, the Santa Fe Conservation Trust, and other artistic and social causes, for many of which she opened her house and garden for fund-raisers and talks. She volunteered at St. Elizabeth Shelter, and gave her support to many organizations helping the less fortunate, as well as New Mexicans running for local and national office. She had a strong interest in the pueblo cultures of the Rio Grande Valley. Sallie was known for her warmth, openness, fine sense of humor, lack of pretension, generosity, and good food served at large and cheerful gatherings.
Sallie is survived by two sons, Barry Ellsworth of New York City and Santa Fe, and Christopher Iovenko (Jessica Carter Iovenko) of Los Angeles; Barry's former wife, Camila Motta, of Santa Fe; sister, Eleanor Bingham Miller of Goshen, KY; five grandchildren, Ariadne Motta Ellsworth (John Aggrey Odera) of New York City, Sadie and Michael Iovenko of Louisville, KY, Iona Motta Ellsworth (Wenyu Jin) of Chicago, and Ezra Iovenko of Los Angeles, as well as numerous other relatives. Sallie was preceded in death in 2017 by one of her sons, William Bingham Iovenko, and earlier by her three brothers: Worth, Barry Jr., and Jonathan Bingham, and her nephew, Robert Worth Bingham IV.
Sallie will be missed by her friends and by the community for her sharp mind and generous outlook; a tried-and-true friend to many, she supported both personally and as a benefactor family, friends, good causes, and good times.
Literary tributes to Sallie will be held on Tue, Sep 23rd, 5PM at Garcia Street Books, 376 Garcia St, Santa Fe; on Thu, Oct 16th, 5:30PM in New York City (tickets at www.AutumnGarden.org); and on Sun, Nov 16, 4PM at SOMOS, 108 Civic Plaza Dr, in Taos, where Lucy Herman, Eileen Wiard, Steve Fox, and Michael Burnet will read from selected writings and share personal anecdotes. A memorial service will be held at The Church of the Holy Faith, 311 E Palace Ave, Santa Fe, on Monday, November 3rd, 2025, at 11AM MST. The service will be live streamed and also available afterwards on the Holy Faith youtube site.