Episode 11: Kaveh Akbar & Ashley M. Jones on Pilgrim Bell and Belonging through Poetry Part One

In this episode, Charlotte reads an essay she wrote about how the church years helps her feel less alone. This essay was originally published in Christianity Today. As we engage more deeply with the ancient streams of art and faith, how they inform one another, and how all of this can create profound new possibilities for belonging, we need ways to respond. Through her work as a spiritual director for writers, artists, and those all along the belief-and-unbelief spectrum, Charlotte Donlon explores how belonging intersects with the contemplative life. Charlotte Donlon helps readers and clients notice how they belong to themselves, others, God, and the world. Charlotte is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, the Writer-in-Residence for a local coffee shop and bookstore, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website. She’s also the host for the Hope for the Lonely and A Writer’s Diary podcasts. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. (https://charlottedonlon.com/the-great-belonging-book) You can subscribe to her newsletter (https://charlottedonlon.substack.com/) and connect with her on Twitter (https://twitter.com/charlottedonlon) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/charlottedonlon/). Learn more about Charlotte, her writing, and her work at charlottedonlon.com. (https://charlottedonlon.com/)

Show Notes (More Show Notes available at ourfaithinwriting.com (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/writing-and-faith/our-faith-in-writing-podcast)) Our Faith in Writing explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. Host Charlotte Donlon is a writer and a spiritual director for writers, and she believes writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Subscribe to Our Faith in Writing wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget to rate and review the show letting us know how these conversations are helping you feel less alone in your writing life and your reading life. More about Reparations Now! Reparations Now! asks for what’s owed. In formal and non-traditional poems, award-winning poet Ashley M. Jones calls for long-overdue reparations to the Black descendants of enslaved people in the United States of America. In this, her third collection, Jones deftly takes on the worst of today—state-sanctioned violence, pandemic-induced crises, and white silence—all while uplifting Black joy. These poems explore trauma past and present, cultural and personal: the lynching of young, pregnant Mary Turner in 1918; the current white nationalist political movement; a case of infidelity. These poems, too, are a celebration of Black life and art: a beloved grandmother in rural Alabama, the music of James Brown and Al Green, and the soil where okra, pole beans, and collards thrive thanks to her father’s hands. By exploring the history of a nation where “Black oppression’s not happenstance; it’s the law,” Jones links past harm to modern heartache and prays for a peaceful world where one finds paradise in the garden in the afternoon with her family, together, safe, and worry-free. While exploring the ways we navigate our relationships with ourselves and others, Jones holds us all accountable, asking us to see the truth, to make amends, to honor one another. More about Ashley M. Jones Ashley M. Jones received an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University (FIU), where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow. Ashley was recently named the new Alabama State Poet Laureate. She served as Official Poet for the City of Sunrise, Florida’s Little Free Libraries Initiative from 2013-2015, and her work was recognized in the 2014 Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writer’s Exchange Contest and the 2015 Academy of American Poets Contest at FIU. She was also a finalist in the 2015 Hub City Press New Southern Voices Contest, the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award Contest, and the National Poetry Series. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including CNN, the Academy of American Poets, POETRY, Tupelo Quarterly, Prelude, Steel Toe Review, Fjords Review, and elsewhere. She received a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and a 2015 B-Metro Magazine Fusion Award. She was an editor of PANK Magazine. Ashley’s debut poetry collection, Magic City Gospel, was published by Hub City Press in January 2017, and it won the silver medal in poetry in the 2017 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her second book, dark // thing, won the 2018 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry from Pleiades Press. Her third collection, REPARATIONS NOW! is forthcoming in Fall 2021 from Hub City Press. Ashley has won several prizes including the 2018 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize from Backbone Press and a Poetry Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival, board member of the Alabama Writers Cooperative and the Alabama Writers Forum, co-director of PEN Birmingham, and a faculty member in the Creative Writing Department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Jones is also a member of the Core Faculty at the Converse College Low Residency MFA Program. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine. Learn more about Ashley, her work, and her writing at ashleymjonespoetry.com. More about Kaveh Akbar Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. His second full-length volume of poetry, Pilgrim Bell, will be published by Graywolf in August 2021. His debut, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, is out now with Alice James in the US and Penguin in the UK. He is also the author of the chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic, published in 2016 by Sibling Rivalry Press. In 2022, Penguin Classics will publish a new anthology edited by Kaveh: The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine In 2020 Kaveh was named Poetry Editor of The Nation. The recipient of honors including multiple Pushcart Prizes, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, and the Levis Reading Prize, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson. In 2014, Kaveh founded Divedapper, a home for dialogues with the most vital voices in American poetry. With Sarah Kay and Claire Schwartz, he wrote a weekly column for the Paris Review called "Poetry RX." Learn more about Kaveh, his work, and his writing at kavehakbar.com. Charlotte Donlon is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/). Charlotte’s writing and work are rooted in noticing how art helps us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (https://charlottedonlon.com/the-great-belonging-book). You can subscribe to her newsletter (https://charlottedonlon.substack.com/) and connect with her onTwitter (https://twitter.com/charlottedonlon) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/charlottedonlon/).

Show Notes (More Show Notes available at ourfaithinwriting.com (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/writing-and-faith/our-faith-in-writing-podcast)) Our Faith in Writing explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. Host Charlotte Donlon is a writer and a spiritual director for writers, and she believes writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Subscribe to Our Faith in Writing wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget to rate and review the show letting us know how these conversations are helping you feel less alone in your writing life and your reading life. Kaveh Akbar and Ashley M. Jones joined Charlotte for a conversation about Kaveh’s newest book of poems, Pilgrim Bell which is available now wherever books are sold. Kaveh and Ashley discussed a few of Kaveh’s poems from Pilgrim Bell, explored how poems help us feel connected to our loved ones who have died, shared what it’s like to write about their parents, and more. The three also talked about how writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, the world, and the divine. More about Pilgrim Bell With formal virtuosity and ruthless precision, Kaveh Akbar’s second collection takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. How does one recover from addiction without destroying the self-as-addict? And if living justly in a nation that would see them erased is, too, a kind of self-destruction, what does one do with the body’s question, “what now shall I repair?” Here, Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance—the infinite void of a loved one’s absence, the indulgence of austerity, making a life as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation—teasing the sacred out of silence and stillness. Richly crafted and generous, Pilgrim Bell’s linguistic rigor is tuned to the register of this moment and any moment. As the swinging soul crashes into its limits, against the atrocities of the American empire, and through a profoundly human capacity for cruelty and grace, these brilliant poems dare to exist in the empty space where song lives—resonant, revelatory, and holy. More about Kaveh Akbar Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. His second full-length volume of poetry, Pilgrim Bell, will be published by Graywolf in August 2021. His debut, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, is out now with Alice James in the US and Penguin in the UK. He is also the author of the chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic, published in 2016 by Sibling Rivalry Press. In 2022, Penguin Classics will publish a new anthology edited by Kaveh: The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine In 2020 Kaveh was named Poetry Editor of The Nation. The recipient of honors including multiple Pushcart Prizes, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, and the Levis Reading Prize, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson. In 2014, Kaveh founded Divedapper, a home for dialogues with the most vital voices in American poetry. With Sarah Kay and Claire Schwartz, he wrote a weekly column for the Paris Review called "Poetry RX." More about Ashley M. Jones Ashley M. Jones received an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University (FIU), where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow. She served as Official Poet for the City of Sunrise, Florida’s Little Free Libraries Initiative from 2013-2015, and her work was recognized in the 2014 Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writer’s Exchange Contest and the 2015 Academy of American Poets Contest at FIU. She was also a finalist in the 2015 Hub City Press New Southern Voices Contest, the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award Contest, and the National Poetry Series. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including CNN, the Academy of American Poets, POETRY, Tupelo Quarterly, Prelude, Steel Toe Review, Fjords Review, and elsewhere. She received a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and a 2015 B-Metro Magazine Fusion Award. She was an editor of PANK Magazine. Her debut poetry collection, Magic City Gospel, was published by Hub City Press in January 2017, and it won the silver medal in poetry in the 2017 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her second book, dark // thing, won the 2018 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry from Pleiades Press. Her third collection, REPARATIONS NOW! is forthcoming in Fall 2021 from Hub City Press. Ashley has won several prizes including the 2018 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize from Backbone Press and a Poetry Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival, board member of the Alabama Writers Cooperative and the Alabama Writers Forum, co-director of PEN Birmingham, and a faculty member in the Creative Writing Department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Jones is also a member of the Core Faculty at the Converse College Low Residency MFA Program. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine. Charlotte Donlon is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/). Charlotte’s writing and work are rooted in noticing how art helps us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (https://charlottedonlon.com/the-great-belonging-book). You can subscribe to her newsletter (https://charlottedonlon.substack.com/) and connect with her onTwitter (https://twitter.com/charlottedonlon) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/charlottedonlon/).

Show Notes (More Show Notes available at ourfaithinwriting.com (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/writing-and-faith/our-faith-in-writing-podcast)) Our Faith in Writing explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. Host Charlotte Donlon is a writer and a spiritual director for writers, and she believes writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Subscribe to Our Faith in Writing wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget to rate and review the show letting us know how these conversations are helping you feel less alone in your writing life and your reading life. Kaveh Akbar and Ashley M. Jones join Charlotte for a conversation about Kaveh’s newest book of poems, Pilgrim Bell which is available now wherever books are sold. Kaveh and Ashley discussed a few of Kaveh’s poems from Pilgrim Bell, explored how poems help us feel connected to our loved ones who have died, shared what it’s like to write about their parents, and more. The three also talked about how writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, the world, and the divine. More about Pilgrim Bell With formal virtuosity and ruthless precision, Kaveh Akbar’s second collection takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. How does one recover from addiction without destroying the self-as-addict? And if living justly in a nation that would see them erased is, too, a kind of self-destruction, what does one do with the body’s question, “what now shall I repair?” Here, Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance—the infinite void of a loved one’s absence, the indulgence of austerity, making a life as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation—teasing the sacred out of silence and stillness. Richly crafted and generous, Pilgrim Bell’s linguistic rigor is tuned to the register of this moment and any moment. As the swinging soul crashes into its limits, against the atrocities of the American empire, and through a profoundly human capacity for cruelty and grace, these brilliant poems dare to exist in the empty space where song lives—resonant, revelatory, and holy. More about Kaveh Akbar Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. His second full-length volume of poetry, Pilgrim Bell, will be published by Graywolf in August 2021. His debut, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, is out now with Alice James in the US and Penguin in the UK. He is also the author of the chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic, published in 2016 by Sibling Rivalry Press. In 2022, Penguin Classics will publish a new anthology edited by Kaveh: The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine In 2020 Kaveh was named Poetry Editor of The Nation. The recipient of honors including multiple Pushcart Prizes, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, and the Levis Reading Prize, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches at Purdue University and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson. In 2014, Kaveh founded Divedapper, a home for dialogues with the most vital voices in American poetry. With Sarah Kay and Claire Schwartz, he wrote a weekly column for the Paris Review called "Poetry RX." More about Ashley M. Jones Ashley M. Jones received an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University (FIU), where she was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow. She served as Official Poet for the City of Sunrise, Florida’s Little Free Libraries Initiative from 2013-2015, and her work was recognized in the 2014 Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writer’s Exchange Contest and the 2015 Academy of American Poets Contest at FIU. She was also a finalist in the 2015 Hub City Press New Southern Voices Contest, the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award Contest, and the National Poetry Series. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in many journals and anthologies, including CNN, the Academy of American Poets, POETRY, Tupelo Quarterly, Prelude, Steel Toe Review, Fjords Review, and elsewhere. She received a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and a 2015 B-Metro Magazine Fusion Award. She was an editor of PANK Magazine. Her debut poetry collection, Magic City Gospel, was published by Hub City Press in January 2017, and it won the silver medal in poetry in the 2017 Independent Publishers Book Awards. Her second book, dark // thing, won the 2018 Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry from Pleiades Press. Her third collection, REPARATIONS NOW! is forthcoming in Fall 2021 from Hub City Press. Ashley has won several prizes including the 2018 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize from Backbone Press and a Poetry Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival, board member of the Alabama Writers Cooperative and the Alabama Writers Forum, co-director of PEN Birmingham, and a faculty member in the Creative Writing Department of the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Jones is also a member of the Core Faculty at the Converse College Low Residency MFA Program. She recently served as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine. Charlotte Donlon is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/). Charlotte’s writing and work are rooted in noticing how art helps us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (https://charlottedonlon.com/the-great-belonging-book). You can subscribe to her newsletter (https://charlottedonlon.substack.com/) and connect with her onTwitter (https://twitter.com/charlottedonlon) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/charlottedonlon/).

Show Notes (More Show Notes available at ourfaithinwriting.com (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/writing-and-faith/our-faith-in-writing-podcast)) Our Faith in Writing explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. Host Charlotte Donlon is a writer and a spiritual director for writers, and she believes writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Subscribe to Our Faith in Writing wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget to rate and review the show letting us know how these conversations are helping you feel less alone in your writing life and your reading life. In the third episode of Our Faith in Writing with Chandra White-Cummings, host Charlotte Donlon and Chandra discuss ways films, TV shows, and actors help Chandra feel less alone and how those who make art should engage different forms of art. Chandra also talks about the healing power of laughter and joy that comes from watching shows like Queen Sugar and Black-ish. Charlotte also gives a shoutout to Blaire Erskine and her hilarious Instagram videos. Chandra also talks about the ways Black women are inspiring her in her creative work. Chandra White-Cummings is a writer, editor, and founder of CWC Media Group and Transforming Justice™, a learning cohort on issues of racial justice. She is a certified trauma healing group facilitator and trainer with the American Bible Society’s Trauma Healing Institute, and covers adult trauma healing, healing for caregivers, sexual assault survivors, and generational trauma healing between Black and white America. She has two young adult sons and lives in Virginia. You can connect with her on Twitter at @ChandraWC. Charlotte Donlon is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/). Charlotte’s writing and work are rooted in noticing how art helps us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (https://charlottedonlon.com/the-great-belonging-book). You can subscribe to her newsletter (https://charlottedonlon.substack.com/) and connect with her onTwitter (https://twitter.com/charlottedonlon) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/charlottedonlon/).

Show Notes (More Show Notes available at ourfaithinwriting.com (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/writing-and-faith/our-faith-in-writing-podcast)) Our Faith in Writing explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. Host Charlotte Donlon is a writer and a spiritual director for writers, and she believes writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Subscribe to Our Faith in Writing wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget to rate and review the show letting us know how these conversations are helping you feel less alone in your writing life and your reading life.Our Faith in Writing is a podcast that explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. In this second episode of Our Faith in Writing with Chandra White-Cummings, host Charlotte Donlon and Chandra discuss different ways art affects Chandra and her writing and her other work as a trauma healing facilitator and trainer. They also discuss some of the ways art and faith intersect in her trauma work with Black women. Chandra White-Cummings is a writer, editor, and founder of CWC Media Group and Transforming Justice™, a learning cohort on issues of racial justice. She is a certified trauma healing group facilitator and trainer with the American Bible Society’s Trauma Healing Institute, and covers adult trauma healing, healing for caregivers, sexual assault survivors, and generational trauma healing between Black and white America. She has two young adult sons and lives in Virginia. You can connect with her on Twitter at @ChandraWC. Charlotte Donlon is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/). Charlotte’s writing and work are rooted in noticing how art helps us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (https://charlottedonlon.com/the-great-belonging-book). You can subscribe to her newsletter (https://charlottedonlon.substack.com/) and connect with her onTwitter (https://twitter.com/charlottedonlon) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/charlottedonlon/).

Show Notes (More Show Notes available at ourfaithinwriting.com (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/writing-and-faith/our-faith-in-writing-podcast)) Our Faith in Writing explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. Host Charlotte Donlon is a writer and a spiritual director for writers, and she believes writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Subscribe to Our Faith in Writing wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget to rate and review the show letting us know how these conversations are helping you feel less alone in your writing life and your reading life.Our Faith in Writing is a podcast that explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. In the first Our Faith in Writing episode with Chandra White-Cummings, host Charlotte Donlon and Chandra discuss racism in Christian publishing. Chandra asks several questions for those inside the Christian publishing spaces to consider, and for the rest of us to consider, too. Chandra White-Cummings is a writer, editor, and founder of CWC Media Group and Transforming Justice™, a learning cohort on issues of racial justice. She is a certified trauma healing group facilitator and trainer with the American Bible Society’s Trauma Healing Institute, and covers adult trauma healing, healing for caregivers, sexual assault survivors, and generational trauma healing between Black and white America. She has two young adult sons and lives in Virginia. You can connect with her on Twitter at @ChandraWC. Charlotte Donlon is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/). Charlotte’s writing and work are rooted in noticing how art helps us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (https://charlottedonlon.com/the-great-belonging-book). You can subscribe to her newsletter (https://charlottedonlon.substack.com/) and connect with her onTwitter (https://twitter.com/charlottedonlon) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/charlottedonlon/).

Show Notes (More Show Notes available at ourfaithinwriting.com (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/writing-and-faith/our-faith-in-writing-podcast)) Our Faith in Writing explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. Host Charlotte Donlon is a writer and a spiritual director for writers, and she believes writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Subscribe to Our Faith in Writing wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget to rate and review the show letting us know how these conversations are helping you feel less alone in your writing life and your reading life.Our Faith in Writing is a podcast that explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. In this episode of Our Faith in Writing, Charlotte Donlon talks to Catherine Ricketts about mothering and making art and how each of those things affect the other. An essay Ricketts wrote for the Ploughshares website is one jumping off point for their conversation. That piece is "The Maternal Vision of Leslie Jamison and Marilynne Robinson." They also discuss the artwork of Alice Neel and Becky Suss, why mother artists inspire Cat’s writing, and more. More Links from this Episode: About Becky Suss Suss has work in New Grit: Art & Philly Now, on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through August 22 About Alice Neel Alice Neel: People Come First, on view at the Met through August 1 Cat's website, where you can subscribe to newsletter Cat Ricketts on Twitter Cat Rickets on Instagram Catherine Ricketts is an essayist and songwriter based in Philadelphia. Her literary nonfiction about the arts, grief and joy, and spirituality appears on the Ploughshares blog, in Image Journal, The Millions, Paste, and NPR-affiliate The Key, and is forthcoming in The Christian Century. Concurrent with her own writing, she has maintained a vibrant career in the arts and is passionate about nurturing the work of other artists, whether by writing about them, commissioning new work, or producing performances. She is currently at work on two books of nonfiction, one about grief and beauty, the other about motherhood and artistic practice. Find her on Instagram at @bycatherinericketts, where she hosts the semiweekly "IG Live Lullaby," or on the web at www.catherinedanaricketts.com. Charlotte Donlon is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/). Charlotte’s writing and work are rooted in noticing how art helps us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (https://charlottedonlon.com/the-great-belonging-book). You can subscribe to her newsletter (https://charlottedonlon.substack.com/) and connect with her onTwitter (https://twitter.com/charlottedonlon) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/charlottedonlon/).

Show Notes (More Show Notes available at ourfaithinwriting.com (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/writing-and-faith/our-faith-in-writing-podcast)) Our Faith in Writing explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. Host Charlotte Donlon is a writer and a spiritual director for writers, and she believes writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Subscribe to Our Faith in Writing wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget to rate and review the show letting us know how these conversations are helping you feel less alone in your writing life and your reading life.Our Faith in Writing is a podcast that explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. In this episode, Charlotte Donlon talks to Delvyn Case about some of the ways Jesus shows up in popular music. They discuss rap, punk, and country music artists and how Jesus is acknowledged in their music. Delvyn wrote an article for Sojourner's magazine in October 2020 titled "JESUS SHOWS UP IN DISCOS, HONKY-TONKS, BLUES BARS, AND STRIP CLUBS." This article was the jumping off point for this podcast episode. If you subscribe to Sojourner's you can read it here, but it's not required reading for you to listen to this episode. Black hip-hop scholars recommend by Delvyn: Ebony Utley, Anthony Pinn, Michael Eric Dyson, Tricia Rose For the history of country music, Delvyn suggests the Ken Burns documentary from a few years ago. For the origins of rock'n'roll, the Rolling Stone History of Rock'n'Roll is a comprehensive resource. It delves deeply into the Black origins of the style. Another great book on the development of 60's rock out of the blues is McNally's "On Highway 61: Race, Music, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom." Delvyn Case is a musician, writer, scholar, and educator based in Boston. He is a composer of classical concert music whose work often explores themes from the Christian tradition, as well as a scholar of popular music. He writes about the intersections of music and religion for both academic and general audiences, including on his Patheos blog “Alleluia: Music and the Christian Life.” He is the founder of Deus Ex Musica, an ecumenical organization that promotes sacred music as a resource for learning and faith formation. He teaches at Wheaton College in Massachusetts – which, ironically, is a secular institution unrelated to the Wheaton College in Illinois. Charlotte Donlon is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/). Charlotte’s writing and work are rooted in noticing how art helps us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (https://charlottedonlon.com/the-great-belonging-book). You can subscribe to her newsletter (https://charlottedonlon.substack.com/) and connect with her onTwitter (https://twitter.com/charlottedonlon) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/charlottedonlon/).

Show Notes (More Show Notes available at ourfaithinwriting.com (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/writing-and-faith/our-faith-in-writing-podcast)) Our Faith in Writing explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. Host Charlotte Donlon is a writer and a spiritual director for writers, and she believes writing and reading help us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Subscribe to Our Faith in Writing wherever you listen to podcasts, and don’t forget to rate and review the show letting us know how these conversations are helping you feel less alone in your writing life and your reading life. Our Faith in Writing is a podcast that explores the intersection of writing and faith through conversations about the writing process, the reading life, contemplative practices, and more. In this episode, Charlotte talks to poet Ashley M. Jones about her writing life, her faith, and more. Ashley M. Jones holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017), dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City Press 2021). Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards, the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry, a Literature Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She was a finalist for the Ruth Lily Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship in 2020. Her poems and essays appear in or are forthcoming at CNN, POETRY, The Oxford American, Origins Journal, The Quarry by Split This Rock, Obsidian, and many others. She teaches at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, she co-directs PEN Birmingham, and she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She currently serves as the O’Neal Library’s Lift Every Voice Scholar and as a guest editor for Poetry Magazine. Charlotte Donlon is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website (https://www.ourfaithinwriting.com/). Charlotte’s writing and work are rooted in noticing how art helps us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other (https://charlottedonlon.com/the-great-belonging-book). You can subscribe to her newsletter (https://charlottedonlon.substack.com/) and connect with her onTwitter (https://twitter.com/charlottedonlon) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/charlottedonlon/).