ENG 301 Spiritual Writing

Writing to reveal the inner self--the pilgrimage into one's spiritual and/or religious nature--is a primary calling. In his book-length essay Spirituality and the Writer, Larson surveys the literary insights of authors old and new who have shaped religious autobiography and spiritual memoir--from Augustine to Thomas Merton, from Peter Matthiessen to Cheryl Strayed.

Provides a close reading and analysis of ten major life stories by twentieth-century leaders and thinkers from a variety of religious and cultural traditions. The book uses approaches from literary criticism, developmental psychology, and spirituality. Each text is read in the light of the autobiographical tradition begun by St. Augustine's Confessions, but with a focus on distinctively modern and post-modern transformations of the self-writing genre.

Given its affinity with questions of identity, autobiography offers a way into the interior space between author and reader, especially when writers define themselves in terms of religion. In his exploration of this "textual intimacy," Wesley Kort begins with a theorization of what it means to say who one is and how one's self-account as a religious person stands in relation to other forms of self-identification. He then provides a critical analysis of autobiographical texts by nine contemporary American writers--including Maya Angelou, Philip Roth, and Anne Lamott--who give religion a positive place in their accounts of who they are.

Provides simple and flexible, yet provocative, writing ideas that can be used with all levels of writers. These prompts are not the typical one-line story starters or formulaic fill-in the blank activities, but are designed to lead to substantive, meaningful writing and foster reflection on a variety of relevant and thought-provoking topics. Included with each prompt are carefully chosen mentor texts that model the possible shapes and forms writing might take and stimulate individual reflection and writing.

In this engaging creative writing workbook, novelist and poet Linda Lappin presents a series of insightful exercises to help writers of all genres--literary travel writing, memoir, poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction--discover imagery and inspiration in the places they love.

Taking off from "The Creative Writer's Survival Guide," "Vivid and Continuous"is a blunt, cheerful, and helpful map to "learning" to be a writer.

Explores the key challenges in writing narrative non-fiction, and shows how some of the best in the business do it - an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to tell true stories well.