At 2:00 PM on Saturday, March 16, author and historian Jan MacKell Collins will speak at North Bend Public Library. Her topic, “Outrageous Women of the Wild West,” is an overview of her research into the history of prostitution in the western United States. She has already published books on this subject, including Wild Women of Prescott, Arizona and two titles co-authored with Thomas J. Noel, Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains and Brothels, Bordellos, and Bad Girls: Prostitution in Colorado, 1860-1930. In the next two years there will be more titles on this theme under an umbrella title of Goodtime Girls. Collins has been researching and writing about history in the west since 1989. She has written and co-authored fifteen books to date and is currently writing two more. Her specialty area is historical prostitution, in which she researches the lives and histories of famous and not-so-famous prostitutes of the past. Jan has appeared on TruTV’s Adam Ruins Everything and Rocky Mountain PBS, and on radio numerous times over the years. She lives here in the Pacific Northwest, where she continues to enjoy giving programs and presentations.
