Circling Faith Reading/Signing Set for July 16 at Lemuria Books in Jackson

I’m excited to share that in addition to the reading/signing scheduled for July 12 at Burke’s Books in Memphis, an event is also scheduled for July 16 at Lemuria Books in my home town, Jackson, Mississippi. I’ve known Lemuria owner, John Evans, for many years, and I couldn’t be prouder to be reading at his wonderful bookstore. (John is included in this interview I did for Jane Friedman’s Writer’s Digest blog last year.) I’m also happy that Circling Faith editor, Wendy Reed, will be joining me. Here’s the event info:

5:00 p.m. July 16 at Lemuria Books

202 Banner Hall  •  4465 I-55 North  •  601.366.7619

Circling Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality (2012, University of Alabama Press, editors Jennifer Horne and Wendy Reed) is a collection of essays by 20 Southern authors including Mary Karr, Alice Walker, Beth Ann Fennelly, Marilou Awiakta, and Jackson native, Susan Cushman. The anthology encompasses spirituality and the experience of winding through the religiously charged environment of the American South.

Wendy Reed writes, produces, teaches and directs at the University of Alabama Center for Public Television and Radio. She is also co-editor with Jennifer Horne of All Out of Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality (University of Alabama Press, 2006).

Susan Cushman’s essay, “Chiaroscuro: Shimmer and Shadow,” is about how a spiritual expat from the “Christ-haunted South” found healing through art and Eastern Orthodoxy. As the introduction to her essay says:

“Growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1950s and ‘60s, I was always attracted to powerful religious experiences. From my childhood years in the Presbyterian Church, through my involvement with religious movements on college campuses and finally the Jesus freak hippies that formed a church in my first apartment, I finally landed within the walls of the ancient Orthodox Christian Church in the 1980s. It is no small thing to leave one’s religious upbringing, especially in the South, for something as foreign as Eastern Orthodoxy. With this conversion came lots of change, and the process continues today.”

So, mark your calendars and please spread the word about these events in Jackson and Memphis. We’re still working on a fall event for Square Books in Oxford.

Here are three recent reviews for Circling Faith:

“APolite White Background”—5 STAR review on Amazon!

AlabamaWriters Forum 

“Spiritual Living” in Library Journal 

If you read Circling Faith, please write a reader’s review somewhere and let me know where—Goodreads, Powells, Amazon, your own personal blog, or elsewhere. Thanks for reading!