True North

Jill Ker Conway was born Jill Kathryn Ker in Hillston, New South Wales, Australia on October 9, 1934. She received a history degree from the University of Sydney in 1958 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1969. She took a teaching post at the University of Toronto. She became a dean in 1971 and a vice president in 1973. In 1975, she became the first woman to be named president of Smith College. She left Smith in 1985 to become a writer.

She wrote three memoirs entitled The Road from Coorain, True North, and A Woman's Education. In 2002, the PBS program Masterpiece Theater used The Road from Coorain as the basis for a film. She also wrote When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography. She edited several books including Written by Herself: Autobiographies of American Women and In Her Own Words: Women's Memoirs from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. In 2013, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal. She died on June 1, 2018 at the age of 83.

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