Beverly Mayne Kienzle

A retired Harvard Divinity School professor, Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Ph.D., focused her distinguished academic career on medieval preaching, sermons, heresy, and saints' lives. The foremost authority on Hildegard of Bingen's "Homilies on the Gospels" (translation, 2011), Beverly has published six books on the renowned medieval visionary. Her newest academic book, "Hildegard of Bingen, Gospel Interpreter", was published December 15, 2020. Beverly speaks on Hildegard's concept of viridity in the live video broadcast by Michael Conti and Annette Esser, "Saint Hildegard Speaks: Virtual 12-day pilgrimage, September 6 -17, 2020". In 2018, Beverly co-authored with Nancy E. Nienhuis the innovative "Saintly Women: Medieval Saints, Modern Women, and Intimate Partner Violence".

Beverly Mayne Kienzle is a granddaughter of life-long Kentucky resident, Virginia Cary Hudson (1894-1954), the author of "O Ye Jigs and Juleps!" (April 1962), a New York Times bestseller for 66 weeks. Beverly grew up surrounded by manuscripts, as her mother Virginia Cleveland Mayne tirelessly completed the publication of four volumes of Virginia Cary Hudson’s writings. Beverly returned to her roots to write her grandmother’s biography: "Virginia Cary Hudson, The Jigs & Juleps! Girl: Her Life & Writings" (2016). This delightful book contains never-before-published photos, poems, drawings, and letters. From childhood to adulthood, Virginia demonstrated the same keen spirit, as she recorded acute and humorous observations of humankind and bore witness to her steadfast faith.

Readers will delight in more of Virginia's hilarious childhood escapades, recounted in "Unfinished Business" (2016) and "My Bible," (2021) 1905 essays by Hudson that Beverly discovered among her mother's many papers. Virginia Cary Hudson's vibrant "Letters from Vegas 1953" tell us what happened the year that "Sin City" opened a racetrack. Virginia captures the essence of Las Vegas and its people with empathy, humor, and acute perception. Hudson's famous and eerie story of a cursed chest, complete with Beverly's research on the chest's victims, appeared in "The Conjured Chest: A Cursed Family in Old Kentucky" (2017). Beverly, who grew up with the chest, was interviewed in Las Vegas by Zak Bagans of "Ghost Adventures." The Travel Channel episode of "Deadly Possessions" premiered April 9, 2016 and is available on Amazon. Beverly appeared with the actual conjured chest (now at the Kentucky Historical Society) that brought death to the maker, members of Beverly's family, and the woman who removed the curse. On October 24, 2021, Beverly spoke by Zoom at an event for the Cloverport (Ky) Museum, where 75 people visited to see what impact the conjured chest had on the people of that small town.