KENTUCKY
Lexington Herald-Leader
JACOB DICK
jdick@herald-leader.com
Kentucky state Rep. Jim Wayne has made a career of writing professionally as a veteran legislator and contributor to publications like The National Catholic Reporter and America, but Wayne’s latest work is a departure from explanations of social policy or bill proposals.
The Louisville Democrat published his first book this month, a novel called The Unfinished Man.
In Wayne’s fiction debut, Father Justin Zapp is a self-exiled priest in an Indiana parish who is forced to face his own psychological wounds from sexual abuse when he learns of a systematic cover-up of abuse within the church.
Wayne said he had been interested in writing for a long time but had only written pieces on social and political policy until he took a graduate course at the University of Louisville.
His professor encouraged him to continue and in 2008, Wayne enrolled at Spalding University in Louisville. Taking time between legislative sessions and elections, Wayne received a Master of Fine Arts in fiction in 2012.
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