KENTUCKY
Insider Louisville
By SARA HAVENS | June 8, 2016
Kentucky State Rep. Jim Wayne, D-Louisville, has been quite busy working on a passion he’s had for years. Somewhere in the midst of serving in public office (since 1991) and working as a psychotherapist, he went back to school and received his MFA in fiction from Spalding University in 2012. And now, he’s debuting his first novel, “The Unfinished Man,” a fictional story that examines sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Wayne says the idea for the book had been brewing for years, and after he received his formal training from Spalding, he used his downtime to write.
“To tell you the truth, I most often relax when I write,” he tells Insider. “Most of my work in psychotherapy and the legislature taxes the side of my brain that is logical, sequential and focused on goals. In writing, some of those skills are used, but the writing muses play best in the other side of the brain. It all keeps me balanced.”
The story of “The Unfinished Man” tackles a subject that is important to Wayne: Throughout his time as a representative, he has worked closely with victims of Catholic clergy sexual abuse and sponsored legislation to tighten the reporting requirements and penalties for sexual abuse of minors.
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