The speaker is Katy Simpson Smith. Smith is the author of the acclaimed 2014 novel, "The Story of Land and Sea." She received a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.F.A. from the Bennington Writing Seminars. She is an adjunct professor at Tulane University and has published a study of early American motherhood, "We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750–1835."