Festival of Faith and Writing: Come Meet Us!

Sick Pilgrims! Come hang with us at the Festival of Faith and Writing next week. Jess and Jonathan will both be speaking on panels (schedule below). And if you’re interested in hanging out Friday night after we all listen to Tobias Wolf, let us know on our Facebook page. We’ll be posting details there.

During the week, we’ll be posting quick thoughts, reflections and other things. Maybe even a few quick interviews.

Plus, Jonathan will be at the Ave Maria booth occasionally, so come pitch your book idea to him.

Thursday

3:15 P.M. Weird Fiction as Sacramental Practice,  Jonathan Ryan and Cina Pelayo

Commons Annex, Lecture Hall

How can the literary genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and paranormal act as sacramental literature? This panel will explore how the “weird fiction” of writers including Charles Williams, Gene Wolfe, and Stephen King can strip off our naturalistic blinders and invite us to “behold,” in the Old Testament sense, the unseen world around us.

Thursday Night: The Mountain Goats

We’ll be there, will you? Come listen with us.

Friday

8:30 A.M. How Chronic Conditions Challenge and Enrich the Writing Life, Jessica Mesman Griffith, Daniel Bowman, and Ellen Painter Dollar

Covenant Fine Arts Center, Room 115

Writers who live with a variety of chronic physical, mental, and neurobiological conditions talk about how their experiences of disability impart hard-earned insight around issues including health, technology, and thriving within our limits. Jess will be talking about mental illness and creativity, but this discussion is for all writers invested in compassion, humility, creativity, and how our gifts can grow from what we see as weakness.

11:30 A.M. Memoir as Feminist Testimony, Jessica Mesman Griffith,  Amy Julia Becker,Alison Hodgson, Katherine Willis Pershey and Rachel Marie Stone.

Covenant Fine Arts Center, Auditorium.

We live in a world where women still struggle to be heard and believed about their own lives. Perhaps that’s why memoir, as a genre, is particularly resonant for women writers despite the very real danger of being branded as navel-gazers. This panel will discuss how memoir functions differently than other forms of non-fiction, and Jess will talk specifically about why spiritual memoir can be a call to communion and relationship, rather than a sign of self-absorption.

Friday Night: After Tobias Wolfe

Meet up with us for a beer or something. Look for us wearing our matching (temporary) tats. We have one for you too!