Kay Merkel Boruff

Elizabeth Buehring Slack

Raised with tumble weeds and the red dirt of north Texas, Kay Merkel Boruff lived in Viet-Nam 1968-1970 with her Air America/CIA husband who was killed flying in Laos 18 Feb 70. She taught 38 years at The Hockaday School, created a Drama Therapy Program at the VA-Dallas, was interviewed by NPR, studied with Robert Olen Butler in France, attended Burning Man, and climbed Wayna Picchu on her 71st birthday. Letters of her husband's and her are included in "Love & War: 250 Years of Wartime Letters." Her work is included in the New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, and Texas 2. She is the author of "Z.O.S. A Memoir of Sex Blood Money and the CIA in Southeast Asia." She is working on her next book "Green Parrots, Chocolate Mousse and Rocks in Her Pockets." She lives in Dallas with her Labrador Molly Bloom.

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Indie Author Pavilion - Adult Nonfiction

Indie Author Pavilion - Adult Nonfiction (Seats 10)  
Sun, Mar 3, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Authors: B Abraham, Kay Merkel Boruff, Julie Bradley, Harvey Hoff, Richard Jones, Elizabeth Lewis, Ray Lindstrom, Paula Trimble-Familetti, Ferdinand von Galen, Tim Wood

Book:

Z.O.S. A Memoir

Memoir / Essays / Creative Nonfiction
Black Rose Writing
August 2018
ISBN 9781944715304
220 pages
The author will make this book available for sale at the Author Pavilion during the Festival.

Z.O.S. is a memoir about sex, blood, money, and the CIA in Southeast Asia. Kay Merkel Boruff tells the story from her perspective of wife and widow of an Air America pilot killed during covert operations in Laos. She takes the reader there as only one who has been there can. You experience the highs, understand the efforts to escape the constant fear of the dangerous reality these American heroes face daily, feel the anguish of her loss and the isolation of the "zone of silence" she is required to live in for the rest of her life. Kay Merkel Boruff, as a teacher at The Hockaday School 1973--2010, studies with Naomi Shihab Nye, Li-Young Lee, Tim O'Brien, Madeleine L'Engle, and Robert Olen Butler. She unveils the Air America Memorial at UTD with CIA Director William Colby. Armed with the philosophy carpe diem, she attends Burning Man and climbs Wayna Picchu, chasing another adventure in her "zone of silence." More/less