Ministry of Writing Panel Talks Schedule of Events

Schedule
of Events
Friday, November 4
6:00 pm Registration Opens
6:30 pm Keynote Presentation - Patricia Raybon
7:30 pm Break
8:00 pm Open Mic for Presenters and Attendees
Saturday, November 5
8:00 am Registration and Breakfast
8:40 am Optional Worship
9:00 am Welcome
9:15 am Panel I – Beholding Transformation
Talks – Graves, McAulliffe, Sasso
10:45 am Break
11:00 am Workshop Session I
12:30 pm Lunch
1:45 pm Panel II – Eyeing Faith
Talks – Dark, Hsu, Raybon
3:15 pm Break
3:30 pm Workshop Session II
5:10 pm Closing
ONLINE REGISTRATION: esr.earlham.edu/WC2016
Panel Talks
Marlena Graves – A Name God Can Change:
Owning Our Stories and Wrestling with God
quite completes, as well as from questions scripture never
fully answers. What the rabbis did with words, artists did
with image and sound, moving beyond literal analysis to
the creation of new, living meaning in every generation.
David Dark – Religion Happens
David Dark argues that religion might be the most catastrophically unexamined abstraction of our time. It’s an
easy catch-all for craziness, a convenient location for
placing blame, and a seemingly easy way to isolate chaos
with a concept. But look deeper. Religion isn’t simply
about who does or doesn’t believe in God or an afterlife.
Religion is the question of what we do with ourselves,
and with others. Your religion is your witness; it’s the
shape your loves and hates take. Might re-examining this
hot-button word, what appears to be the most divisive
word of all, afford us the hope of undivided living? Might it
change not just the way we write, but the way we live?
ESR
Ministry
of Writing
Al Hsu – The Spiritual Life as Editorial Process
Genesis 32 describes how Jacob wrestles with God,
emerging slightly crippled and with a new name: Israel. But
before his renaming – before the wrestling match even begins – Jacob must own the story of his life so far. As writers, we also wrestle: what is our voice? What is our name?
The answer must begin with owning our own stories and
identities, even as God wrestles us toward new ones.
Can editing – and being edited – bring transformation, and
even redemption? InterVarsity Press editor and author Al
Hsu contends that editing may be a spiritual process, and
that both writing and editing offer windows into the spiritual
life. This presentation will explore God’s identity as divine
editor, writing as an incarnational practice, the grace of
editorial review, and the significance of editorial community.
Shena McAuliffe – Writing as Recycling: Collages,
Mashups, Documents, and Fakes
Patricia Raybon – Why Our Stories Still Matter
In Seattle, there is an 8-year-old girl who feeds her neighborhood crows. In return, they bring her gifts: Legos,
buttons, glass beads, bottle caps, bits of yarn, polished
rocks, and plastic figurines. The girl arranges her collection of glittering treasures in a box with a clear plastic lid.
What happens if we write with the sensibility of crows,
scavenging treasures from the world around us, and with
the sensibility of this eight-year-old girl, gratefully arranging these gifts into our own masterpieces? Writers of
contemporary poetry and prose use photographs, police
blotters, historical documents, footnotes, and a slew of
other “non-artistic” forms to make art and explore issues
of justice. What can they teach us about writing and art?
Photo: Julie Dishman
An Annual Colloquium
November
4-5, 2016
As Patricia Raybon struggled with a new challenge –
writing a mystery novel – she flirted with despair. Did this
made-up story even matter? Considering that the crime/
mystery genre ranks second only to romance/erotica in
popularity, our culture seems to suggest that, somehow,
it might. In this talk, Raybon explores what writers of faith
can learn from plotting a mystery, from creating compelling characters, and from designing a believable story
world – none of it “fact” but, as fiction, all worthy and true.
Richmond,
Indiana
The Ministry of Writing Colloquium:
Rabbi Sandy Sasso – Imagining with Scripture: Lessons
from the Rabbis and Other Artists
“The Ministry of Writing” colloquium was endowed by
individuals in honor of Tom Mullen at the time of his
retirement as Dean of Earlham School of Religion in 1990.
Tom retired from ESR in 1997. He passed away in June 2009.
The rabbis believed that the Bible spoke to every generation anew. They allowed the sacred stories to enter
their lives and their lives to enter the stories. In part, this
imaginative work became midrash, a body of literature
that spins new stories out of narratives that scripture never
His “Writing for the Religious Market” class, first offered
over 20 years ago, was the beginning of ESR’s unique
emphasis in the ministry of writing. The colloquium will
be held in the ESR Center at the northeast corner of the
Earlham Campus.
228 College Avenue
Richmond, Indiana 47374
800.432.1377
esr.earlham.edu
addition to writing a monthly column for the Indianapolis
Star, she is presently the director of the Religion, Spirituality, and Arts Initiative at Butler University and CTS and the
author of many award-winning children’s books. Sasso
has also written two books for adults, Midrash: Reading
the Bible with Question Marks and Jewish Stories of Love
and Marriage, co-authored with Peninnah Schram. She
and her husband, Dennis Sasso, were the first practicing
rabbinical couple in world Jewish history. Rabbis Sasso
have two children and three grandchildren.
Eye of the
Beholder
We see differently. As writers, readers, and editors, we bring our whole selves to creative work. That includes our race and gender, but also our work, our faith, our blind spots, and far more. Join us as we consider how we behold – and how we are beheld – in words and in the spirit.
___ Dark
___ Graves
❍ Dietary Restrictions: ________________ ___ Hsu
__________________________________ ___ McAuliffe
Registration fee covers all colloquium events, ___ Raybon
including Friday night keynote address, panels, ___ Sasso
workshops, breakfast, lunch, and refreshments.
❍ Colloquium prior to Oct. 16, 2016: $85
❍ Undergrad and graduate students: $35
❍ Colloquium after Oct. 16, 2016: $100
WORKSHOP TWO
preference
(Top 3 choices)
Send to: ESR Writing Colloquium 2016,
Julie Dishman, Earlham School of Religion,
228 College Avenue, Richmond, IN 47374.
1.800.432.1377, Email: dishmju@earlham.edu
Online registration: esr.earlham.edu/WC2016
Please make checks payable to:
Earlham School of Religion.
Registration
E-mail _____________________________
Writing about your life can tempt you to be exhaustive
and exhausting – to slog through life’s minutiae in an
attempt to give a comprehensive history of you. Memoir,
by contrast, offers a challenge that’s both liberating and
focusing: to tell about one particular slice, or snarl, of your
life. Drawing examples from some of the world’s bestloved memoirs, this workshop explores the techniques that
can turn one writer’s experiences into essential stories that
challenge, surprise, and inspire.
Phone (______)______________________
Those of us who write long to be read—unless we’re journaling for our own sake. At the same time, marketing ourselves can feel insincere, false, and exhausting. For many
writers, these tensions come to a head as they build their
“platform” – meaning, basically, all the ways that writers
build an audience. Building a platform might mean
figuring out how to develop a community around
your blog, expand your Twitter following, or reach
readers through Facebook. Even offline,
AL HSU (pronounced “shee”) is senior editor for IVP
Books at InterVarsity Press, where he acquires and develops books in such areas as culture, discipleship, church
ministry, and global mission. In his two decades at IVP,
he has worked with over 200 authors and published
over 250 titles, including award-winning books by Os
Guinness, Andy Crouch, Soong-Chan Rah, Rachel Marie
Stone, Richard Twiss, Mae Cannon, and Michael Card. Al
holds a PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and
a master’s from Wheaton College Graduate School, and
has served as a columnist for Christianity Today magazine. He is the author of three books: Grieving a Suicide,
The Suburban Christian, and Singles at the Crossroads.
He lives in the western suburbs of Chicago with his wife
and two sons.
Patricia Raybon
Not Every Single Thing: Crafting Memoir
with Narrative Focus and Courage
State__________ Zip__________________
Marlena Graves
What’s Your Platform? Attracting
Readers Without Selling Your Soul
Nobody should write everything. But everyone can write
something. This workshop will offer an acquisition editor’s
perspective on finding the sweet spot. First, how can writers discern what they are most called to write? Second,
how do editors decide which projects are publishable?
Learn how to negotiate the dual discernment process of
faith-based publishing.
RABBI SANDY EISENBERG SASSO was the first woman
to be ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1974. She received her B.A. and M.A. from Temple
University and D.Min. from Christian Theological Seminary
(CTS). She served Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis for 36 years before becoming rabbi emerita. In
___ Dark
___ Graves
___ Hsu
___ McAuliffe
___ Raybon
___ Sasso
A journalist by training, PATRICIA RAYBON is the
award-winning author of Undivided: A Muslim Daughter,
Her Christian Mother, and Their Path to Peace; I Told the
Mountain to Move, a prayer memoir; and My First White
Friend, a racial forgiveness memoir. A lifelong member of the
A.M.E. Church, Raybon has also published a tribute book on
African American spirituals, Bound for Glory, and The One
Year God’s Great Blessing’s Devotional. Her essays on family
and faith have appeared in The New York Times Magazine,
Newsweek, Christianity Today, and In Touch, among others.
DAVID DARK teaches in the College of Theology at Belmont
University and among the incarcerated communities of Nashville. He is the author of Life’s Too Short To Pretend You’re Not
Religious and The Sacredness of Questioning Everything.
Al Hsu
What Editors Think When They Read
Your Proposal: Calling, Vocation, and
Writing for Publication
SHENA MCAULIFFE is a Visiting Assistant Professor of
Creative Writing at Earlham College. Her stories and essays
have been published in Conjunctions, Gulf Coast, Black
Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Utah and
an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis.
The rabbis, through midrash, question why the biblical patriarch Jacob stopped for the night where he did, why he
dreamed of a ladder, and why he encountered God in that
place. Reading the Genesis narrative of Jacob wrestling
with the angel, they also wonder: with whom or what did
Jacob struggle? Poets, composers, and artists have also
grappled with these texts, and their work illuminates the
power of fear, the process of creativity, and the revelation
of the sacred. In this workshop, we’ll spend time listening
to the music, reading the poetry, and looking at the art
that has come to surround Jacob. In written exercises,
we’ll ask how our own perspectives might enrich the text,
generate diverse meanings, and inspire our own work.
City_______________________________
For writers, race is a minefield – full of unofficial rules
and unwritten expectations. Should only people of color
write about race matters? Must writers of color exclusively
explore race – or put race at the center of their stories?
Will other writers stop tiptoeing around race, avoiding the
topic as if it’s an artistic taboo? As an award-winning African
American journalist and author of spirituality narratives,
Raybon has navigated these tensions for her entire career. In
this talk, she will explore her dilemma: how to write stories
that transcend her racial identity while staying real and relevant to that identity. At the same time, she will suggest that
all writers – not just writers of color – can advance the conversation by writing race as one part of their whole selves.
If your religion is the story that locates you in the world and
guides you through it, good news: your story can change.
Introducing the concept of “attention collections,” David
Dark will lead a discussion on the insights we gain by looking hard at our own preoccupations and enthusiasms. For
example, when a creative work gives you hope – by articulating your loves, your worries, or your deepest questions –
it can also teach you something about yourself, your story,
even your blind spots. We’re stuck with our relatives, Ralph
Ellison once observed, but we get to choose our ancestors.
How can we surface our inner “genealogies” to choose
wisely? Can we use the stories we love to more deeply
understand, and own, the stories that make us, us?
When we write we are always borrowing words, ideas, and
forms from the world around us, and shaping these words
into our own stories, essays, and poems. In this workshop,
we will begin writing pieces that take the form of collage or
assemblage; texts that incorporate or inhabit documents
or photographs; and texts that scavenge ideas, forms, and
voices from others in hopes of discovering our own voice
within the chorus.
Address____________________________
When a black street preacher in Denver died after five
sheriff’s deputies put him in a chokehold, an A.M.E. church
organized a protest and helped force a legal settlement.
The incident also left one member of that church – author
Patricia Raybon – with a familiar dilemma: should she ignore her other writing projects to focus exclusively on racial
justice in her hometown? She did write on the killing, but
what about her mystery novel, always on the back burner?
Or her “frivolous” reflection on decluttering and faith? Or
a sports essay called “Bicycling With God?” Should those
officers’ chokehold restrain something in her, too?
David Dark
Choose Your Ancestors Carefully
MARLENA GRAVES is the author of A Beautiful Disaster:
Finding Hope in the Midst of Brokenness – named the
2014 Best Book on Spiritual Formation by a First Time
Writer by Hearts and Minds Books. Graves is also a bylined
writer for Christianity Today and Our Daily Journey (Our
Daily Bread Ministries), and her pieces have appeared in
Relevant, among many other venues. She is the Minister
of Pastoral Care at her church and an instructor at Winebrenner Seminary. She lives in northwest Ohio with her
husband and three daughters.
Rabbi Sandy Sasso
Dreaming with Jacob
WORKSHOP ONE
preference
(Top 3 choices)
Patricia Raybon
Unlocking the Chokehold:
Race, Justice, and the Grace of
Writing Our Whole Selves
Workshops
Shena McAuliffe
Recycle Your World: Using Collage to
Make Art From the Words Around You
Name______________________________
Keynote
traditional book publishers routinely ask potential authors:
what’s your platform? But how do you catapult your work
into the world without selling your soul?