University of Illinois Alumna and Former Artist in Residence on PBS

Documentary Celebrates University of Illinois Alumna and Artist in Residence Ruth Stone in "PBS Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind"

Airs Nationwide and Streaming on PBS.org Beginning March 1

Premieres Friday, March 3 at 8 pm on Illinois Public Media’s WORLD Channel

Airs Tuesday, March 21 at 9 pm on Illinois Public Media for World Poetry Day

The documentary Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind is a revealing look at the poetry and legacy of the late University of Illinois alumna and Artist in Residence. This one-hour portrait of Ruth Stone’s life and career as a writer and teacher uses candid interviews with Ruth at different times in her life, as well as with her family and colleagues; readings of the elegy poems that followed her husband’s shocking suicide; and animation by her granddaughter to reveal the nature of poetry, grief, creativity, and family dynamics. Ruth met her husband Walter while a student at the University of Illinois in Urbana and returned as the university’s Artist in Residence from 1971-73. The documentary will air on public television stations nationwide beginning March 1, 2023 and in Urbana Friday, March 3 at 8 pm on Illinois Public Media’s WORLD Channel and Tuesday, March 21 at 9 pm on Illinois Public Media for World Poetry Day, and will stream on PBS.org. The film is distributed by American Public Television.

Ruth’s hilltop home in the Green Mountains of Vermont was her idyllic retreat, an old farmhouse purchased to the chagrin of her poet/professor husband Walter with her poetry fellowship money that quickly became a mecca for her students, other poets, friends, and family members. There she inspired countless others to make art and write, surrounded by nature and camaraderie. She referred to the house, filled with unfinished poems, books, and more, as a ‘vast library of the female mind’ and the film spends most of its time within these walls. Footage shot by filmmaker Sidney Wolinsky in the 1970s of Ruth reading her poetry aloud or discussing how her poems come through her is interspersed with interviews done in the mid-2000’s with Ruth and her daughters and grandchildren. These parallels, like of her poem “Metamorphosis” read aloud by Ruth as a mother newly widowed and then as a grandmother in her nineties in unison with two generations of her family, demonstrate the timeless power of her words.

Though not well known outside of the poetry world, Ruth won the National Book Award for Poetry, the Wallace Stevens Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Delmore Schwartz Award - and she was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry among many others accolades and awards. In poems like “Advice” and “Tenacity” read on camera throughout the film by Ruth and others, viewers get to know a ‘poet’s poet’ whose promise was hindered mostly by being a woman in a time when only men were taken seriously in her field, and then by the suicide of her great love on the cusp of his own success, leaving her destitute with three young daughters to raise on her own. After taking a break from writing following Walter’s death, Ruth’s muse returned, and her distinctive and unique voice turned her unflinching gaze at death into accessible poetry that inspires readers to face their own pain. Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind celebrates Ruth’s heroic life story as a poet and mother and leaves no question as to why she became a local and national treasure.

Commentary in the film includes Ruth’s three daughters and their children; award-winning poets Sharon Olds, Toi Derricotte, Major Jackson, Chard DeNiord, and Edward Hirsch; Ruth’s editors; and students from her long career as a creative writing professor and influence at universities and colleges across the country. The film is enhanced with animation by Ruth’s granddaughter Bianca Stone, who leads the on-camera renovation of Ruth’s home after her 2011 death into a vibrant center of inspiration for the next generation of poets and artists and a historic landmark site.

Ruth Stone’s Vast Library of the Female Mind was named “Best Biography” at the 2022 Literature in Cinema Festival and was an official selection at The Santa Fe International Film Festival, Through Women’s Eyes Festival, the Vermont International Film Festival, The International Women’s Film Festival, the Boston Film Festival, the New Jersey Film Festival, Reading Film Fest, and the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival. The film is produced by Nora Jacobson’s Off the Grid Productions. For more information about Ruth Stone and her ongoing legacy at the writer’s retreat established at the film’s end, visit RuthStoneHouse.org or on Instagram @RuthStone_House.

About American Public Television

American Public Television (APT) is the leading syndicator of high-quality, top-rated programming to the nation’s public television stations. Founded in 1961, APT distributes 250 new program titles per year and more than one-third of the top 100 highest-rated public television titles in the U.S. APT’s diverse catalog includes prominent documentaries, performance, news and current affairs programs, dramas, how-to programs, children’s series and classic movies. America’s Test Kitchen From Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country, AfroPoP, Rick Steves’ Europe, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television, Front and Center, Doc Martin, Midsomer Murders, Lidia’s Kitchen, Kevin Belton’s New Orleans Kitchen, Simply Ming, The Best of the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross, and P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home are a sampling of APT’s programs, considered some of the most popular on public television. APT also licenses programs internationally through its APT Worldwide service and distributes Create®TV — featuring the best of public television's lifestyle programming — and WORLD™, public television’s premier news, science and documentary channel. To find out more about APT’s programs and services, visit APTonline.org.