Stay ConnectedRewrite Radio is the podcast of the Festival of Faith & Writing, a biennial celebration of literature and belief in Grand Rapids, MI.
Festival is the flagship initiative of the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing (CCFW), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit fostering scholarship & community around the literary arts.
In this session of Rewrite Radio, we listen back to a conversation with writer Yann Martel from Festival 2008. Interviewed by Otto Selles, a French professor and poet, Martel lets us into the stories behind his stories, the quirks of his freewheeling curiosity, and the ideas at play in his art and mind.Yann Martel is the author of four novels: The Life of Pi, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2002, as well as The High Mountains of Portugal, Beatrice and Virgil, and Self. He has also published a book of short stories, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios and the collection 101 Letters to a Prime Minister, which address Canada’s former Prime Minister, Stephen Harper. In addition to the Man Booker, Martel has received the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and his work has appeared repeatedly on the New York Times bestseller list. His fictions has been translated into many world languages, as well as adapted for the screen and the stage.Born in Spain, Martel now lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where he continues to write and also teaches at the University of Saskatchewan.Rewrite Radio is a production of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, located on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. Theme music is June 11th by Andrew Starr. Additional sound design by Alejandra Crevier.You can find more information about the Center and its signature event, the Festival of Faith and Writing, online at ccfw.calvin.edu and festival.calvin.edu and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Marilynne Robinson is the author of four novels: Housekeeping, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for the best first novel published in 1980; Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction; Home, the winner of the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction; and, most recently, Lila. Robinson has also written books of non-fiction, including Mother Country, The Death of Adam, Absence of Mind, When I Was a Child I Read Book, and The Givenness of Things. Her essays have appeared in such publications as Harper’s, The Paris Review, and The New York Review of Books.Robinson’s other honors include the National Humanities Medal and the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, as well as nominations for both the National Book Award and the Man Booker. She spent much of her career teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, from which she retired in 2016—that was the same year Time magazine named her on its annual list of 100 most influential people.Andy Crouch, author of Culture Making, Playing God, Strong and Weak, and The Tech-Wise Family, has also written about the intersection between culture and faith for Christianity Today, The New York Times, Books & Culture, and The Wall Street Journal. His work has appeared in the anthologies Best Christian Writing and Best Spiritual Writing.Now a partner for theology and culture at Praxis, Crouch has served as a campus minister at Harvard University with Intervarsity and edited re:generation Quarterly.Rewrite Radio is a production of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, located on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. Theme music is June 11th by Andrew Starr. Additional sound design by Alejandra Crevier.You can find more information about the Center and its signature event, the Festival of Faith and Writing, online at ccfw.calvin.edu and festival.calvin.edu and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
On today’s episode of Rewrite Radio: working in the television and movie industry, Abigail Disney and Dorothy Fortenberry are involved in making some of the most significant media today. In this wide-ranging conversation with Jennifer Holberg, co-director of the CCFW, they discuss the ethical imperatives that shape--and should shape--the stories we tell on-screen.Abigail Disney is an award-winning filmmaker, philanthropist, and the CEO and president of Fork Films, which has supported more than 50 films and series that focus on social issues. Disney received her bachelor’s degree from Yale, her master’s from Stanford, and her doctorate from Columbia. An active supporter of peacebuilding, Disney is passionate about advancing women’s roles in the public sphere. In fact, in 2008 she turned to documentaries--inspired by the story of a group of women who used nonviolence to bring an end to Liberia’s long civil war--with the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell, named best documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival. Disney’s directorial debut, The Armor of Light, premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival. Dorothy Fortenberry is a producer and writer on Hulu’s Emmy Award-winning series The Handmaid’s Tale. Prior to that, she spent three years on the writing staff for the CW series The 100. In 2017, IAMA Theatre Company produced the world premiere production of Fortenberry's play Species Native to California, a modern re-telling of The Cherry Orchard. Her play Partners had its world premiere at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Fortenberry's essays on subjects including faith, fear, and the politics of country music have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Real Simple, and Pacific Standard. Dorothy is a recipient of the Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, and she has an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.You can find more information about the Center and its signature event, the Festival of Faith and Writing, online at ccfw.calvin.edu and festival.calvin.edu and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
In this episode of Rewrite Radio, we bring you a session from Festival 2004. Listen in as two poets—Li-Young Lee and Nick Samaras—define the “demonization” of lyrical language and explore the meaning of pauses articulate in poems. Along the way, they reminisce about their lives as readers and writers, speaking about their own stories as pilgrimage.Li-Young Lee has written five highly acclaimed volumes of poetry: Rose; The City in Which I Love You, which was named the Lamont Poetry Selection (now the Laughlin Award); Book of My Nights, which received the William Carlos Williams Award; Behind My Eyes; and, most recently, The Undressing. He is also the author of a memoir, The Winged Seed; this book takes up his parents’ political exile from China, which transported the Lee family first to Indonesia and then to Pennsylvania. Lee has received multiple additional honors, including fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment of the Arts, and a Guggenheim.Nick Samaras is the author of two books of poetry. Hands of the Saddlemaker won the Yales Series of Younger Poets Award, followed by American Psalm, World Psalm. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, Poetry, and The Kenyon Review, as well as elsewhere.Rewrite Radio is a production of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, located on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. Theme music is June 11th by Andrew Starr. Additional sound design by Alejandra Crevier.You can find more information about the Center and its signature event, the Festival of Faith and Writing, online at ccfw.calvin.edu and festival.calvin.edu and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
On this Rewrite Radio: Calvin College chaplain, Mary Hulst--first woman ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in the US--interviews Rabbi Sandy Sasso, the first woman to have been ordained a rabbi in Reconstructionist Judaism. Sasso and Hulst discuss Judaism, feminism, and why children’s books are so significant.Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso is the author of several nationally acclaimed children’s books, including For Heaven’s Sake, Noah’s Wife, and The Shema in the Mezuzah, which won the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for Best Illustrated Children’s Book. Sasso credits her rabbinical and interfaith work with shaping her interests in the discovery of the religious imagination in children, as well as in the connection between spirituality and the arts.Sasso is the Director of Religion, Spirituality, and the Arts at Butler University and Christian Theological Seminary. Based in Indianapolis, she has been active in arts, civic, and interfaith communities. She has served on numerous boards addressing issues of women’s equality, education, hunger, philanthropy, the humanities, and the arts. She has been president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and chair of the annual Indianapolis Spirit and Place Festival. She also writes a monthly column for the Indianapolis Star.Rewrite Radio is a production of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, located on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. Theme music is June 11th by Andrew Starr. Additional sound design by Alejandra Crevier.You can find more information about the Center and its signature event, the Festival of Faith and Writing, online at ccfw.calvin.edu and festival.calvin.edu and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
On this episode of Rewrite Radio: Scott Hoezee, a noted preacher himself and the director of the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary, conducts a wide-ranging interview with Fleming Rutledge. Fleming Rutledge is an Episcopal priest and writer of nine books, including the award-winning The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. Ordained to the diaconate in 1975, two years later, she became one of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church. She has often been invited to preach in prominent pulpits such as the Washington National Cathedral, the Duke University Chapel, Trinity Church in Boston, and the Harvard Memorial Chapel.A native of Franklin, Virginia, Rutledge graduated magna cum laude from Sweet Briar College in 1959 and went on to complete her Master in Divinity at Union Theological Seminary. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Virginia Theological Seminary. For the first 14 years of her career, she served at Grace Church in New York City. Subsequently, Rutledge served as interim rector of St. John’s, Salisbury, Connecticut, and has twice been a resident Fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton. She has also been resident at Wycliffe College at the University of Toronto School of Theology, where she taught preaching, and a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome. Rutledge’s particular expertise is the intersection of biblical theology with contemporary culture, current events and politics, literature, music, and art. The Crucifixion, Christianity Today’s 2017 Book of the Year, examines the contemporary meaning of Christ’s sacrifice. Her latest book, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ, was published by Eerdmans in September 2018.Rewrite Radio is a production of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, located on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. Theme music is June 11th by Andrew Starr. Additional sound design by Alejandra Crevier.You can find more information about the Center and its signature event, the Festival of Faith and Writing, online at ccfw.calvin.edu and festival.calvin.edu and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
On today’s Rewrite Radio, independent scholar Sarina Gruver Moore talks with author Afaa Michael Weaver about how his journey took him from factory work to a Fulbright and ultimately to a professorship and an established writing career--and the spiritual practices that helped him along the way. Afaa M. Weaver is a poet, short story writer, playwright, and editor. You need to listen to this episode to learn his whole story, but--spoiler alert--in 1985, Weaver published his first collection of poetry, Water Song, received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for poetry, and attended Brown University’s graduate writing program on a fellowship. Weaver has gone on to publish 10 poetry collections, including Multitudes, The Ten Lights of God, and City of Eternal Spring. As a playwright, Weaver wrote Rosa, which was produced at the Venture Theatre in Philadelphia. He edited the collection These Hands I Know: African-American Writers on Family, and his short fiction appears in a number of anthologies including Children of the Night. Weaver has received many accolades, including the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a Fulbright Scholar appointment, and a fellowship from the Pew Foundation. In addition to teaching at the National Taiwan University and Taipei National University of the Arts on his Fulbright, Weaver held the Alumnae Endowed Chair at Simmons College. He remains a member of the core faculty in the Drew MFA program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation. His papers are held in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.Rewrite Radio is a production of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, located on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. Theme music is June 11th by Andrew Starr. Additional sound design by Alejandra Crevier.You can find more information about the Center and its signature event, the Festival of Faith and Writing, online at ccfw.calvin.edu and festival.calvin.edu and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
On today’s episode, a look back to 2004 when the 2018 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Jacqueline Woodson, visited the Festival.As we listen back to the 2004 Festival, we hear Jacqueline Woodson consider how her upbringing, including her family’s faith commitments, prepared her for life as a writer, a mother, and a humanitarian. Though she writes for all ages, Jacqueline Woodson has won just about every major award in children’s and young adult literature, including several ALA Best Books for Young Adults, multiple Coretta Scott King awards and honors, a number of Newbery Honors, the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the National Book Award. The author of poetry, fiction, and memoir, Woodson is the author of many books, among them: Brown Girl Dreaming, Another Brooklyn (a National Book Award for Fiction nominee), The Other Side, Each Kindness, Coming On Home Soon, Feathers, Show Way, After Tupac and D Foster, and Miracle’s Boys.Rewrite Radio is a production of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, located on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. Theme music is June 11th by Andrew Starr. Additional sound design by Alejandra Crevier.You can find more information about the Center and its signature event, the Festival of Faith and Writing, online at ccfw.calvin.edu and festival.calvin.edu and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Today’s episode of Rewrite Radio features a conversation between the writers April Ayers Lawson and Jamie Quatro, hosted by Amy Frykholm. Titled “Sex, the Spirit, Short Stories, and South,” this conversation takes up the complicated work of writing about religious experience and sexual experience. It may not be appropriate for all listeners.Jamie Quatro writes fiction, poetry, and essays, and her work has appeared in publications such as Tin House, the New York Times Book Review, and the Kenyon Review. Her first book, I Want to Show You More, was a New York Times Notable Book, an NPR Best Book of 2013, and an Indie Next pick. The collection was also a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Georgia Townsend Fiction Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize. Her first novel, Fire Sermon, was released in January 2018.A contributing editor at Oxford American, Quatro teaches in the MFA program at Sewanee, the University of the South, and lives on Lookout Mountain, Georgia.April Ayers Lawson is the author of Virgin and Other Stories, which was named a best book of the year by Vice, Bomb, Southern Living, and Refinery29, and has been translated into German, Italian, Norwegian, and Spanish. The title story in the collection won the Plimpton Prize for Fiction in 2011 and was also named a favorite short story by Flavorwire and anthologized in The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from the Paris Review. She was a 2015 writing fellow at Yaddo, has lectured in the creative writing department at Emory University, and was the 2016–2017 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.Rewrite Radio is a production of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, located on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. Theme music is June 11th by Andrew Starr. Additional sound design by Alejandra Crevier.You can find more information about the Center and its signature event, the Festival of Faith and Writing, online at ccfw.calvin.edu and festival.calvin.edu and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
On today’s Rewrite Radio, Kathleen Dean Moore, a philosopher and nature writer, proposes that the art of spiritual nature writing is to explore unfathomable ideas—mystery, astonishment, sanctity, despair—in the plain language of ice and frogs, returning stars, bells, birdsong, and pawprints in snow. The work of the nature writer, Moore argues, is to see the world—really see it, leaves and bones—and by that seeing, to find a gratitude so full that it can’t be distinguished from joy.Kathleen Dean Moore is an essayist, activist, and author of many books that explore cultural and spiritual connections to nature. Moore is best known for her award-winning books of personal essays, including Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water, Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World, and The Pine Island Paradox, for which she received the Oregon Book Award. Her first novel, Piano Tide, was published in 2016 by Counterpoint. She has written for numerous journals, including Orion, Discover, Audubon, and the New York Times Magazine. Moore is professor emerita of philosophy at Oregon State University, where she is also the founding director of the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word. She teaches courses in environmental ethics as well as a field course in the philosophy of nature. Rewrite Radio is a production of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, located on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. Theme music is June 11th by Andrew Starr. Additional sound design by Alejandra Crevier.You can find more information about the Center and its signature event, the Festival of Faith and Writing, online at ccfw.calvin.edu and festival.calvin.edu and on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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