writing

Patricia Smith reviews an inspirational book on writing and revision as spiritual practice.

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew humbles herself in a search for Marilynne Robinson’s creative authority.

Certain strands of friendship can cross distances, but others—regretfully—are broken.

A question for all of my fellow (I mean that in the non-etymologically masculine sense) Amish Jihadists: What makes one a writer? Is it the simple, ‘I write, therefore I am a writer’ truism? Or, is it something else? Something more? I just want to know when it’s appropriate or inappropriate to say, ‘I’m a […]

A Review of Jacques Rancière’s Mute Speech Jerilyn Sambrooke “There are some questions we dare no longer pose.” Jacques Rancière, Mute Speech Jacques Rancière’s bold challenge opens Mute Speech (1998), one of his most rigorous works on aesthetics, only just recently published in English (2011).  In this opening claim, Rancière echoes the famous, elusive question […]

When strangers at a party or on an airplane find out you’re in divinity school, they’ll want to tell you everything they think about God. You’re supposed to listen and nod profoundly, and you’d better not correct anything they say. You’ve signed up to be a pastoral counselor, whether you meant to or not. Perhaps […]

Ron Hansen’s fiction is tight and rich. Each of Hansen’s writings carries a certain arc: the plains of the American West, the sanctuary of a hushed convent, and the frenzied deck of theDeutschland are both terse and beautiful, places where redemption is particularly fitted to each character’s peculiar, compelling humanity. In this interview, Hansen talks […]

A poem inspired by a photograph taken in Haiti, five days after the 2006 election of Rene Preval.

I will make him with red hair and a fiery tongue I will give him a country and a century a limp and strong hands I will take his wife but give him a daughter lovely enough to break his heart and will send him across the sea where he will die an old man […]