Faith and Writing: A Big-Tent Festival
A poet/theologian who promotes peace in Northern Ireland, a producer and writer for the Emmy Award-winning series The Handmaid’s Tale, and a Haitian-American novelist who focuses on the lives and struggles of Haitian women are among those taking part in the 2018 Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Set for April 12-14, the festival will also feature musicians, an Anglican priest who expounds on the crucifixion of Christ, a hymn writer, worship leaders, a pastor and author who has struggled with cancer, and illustrators, book publishers, and book agents.
“This is a big-tent gathering of readers and writers from all over the U.S. and Canada and beyond, all of us giddy with excitement and . . . coming together to greet friends new and old and to share the joy of literature and belief,” said Debra Rienstra, a Calvin College English professor.
The festival is held every two years and is sponsored by the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing and the Calvin College English department.
Since its beginning in 1990, the festival has grown over the years and has brought in such authors as Chaim Potok, John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Anne Lamott, Marilynne Robinson, Eugene Peterson, Salman Rushdie, Frederick Buechner, and Maya Angelou. This year’s festival will likely bring in 2,000 people to Calvin’s campus.
Many of the writers who come to the festival are grateful for the opportunity to speak about how their faith plays into their work, said Lisa Ann Cockrel, director of the festival, in a press release.
The festival is a place, she said, “where we’re thinking about the religious elements in their work and also where that engagement doesn’t come with judgment. Instead, we read with open hearts and a spirit of inquiry.”
In the presentations, workshops, readings, and panel discussions, writers and others will talk about how they are able to connect with God through their stories, poems, and autobiographies. They will talk about how, through storytelling, they can show people, even in the face of despair and hopelessness, that God is at work in their lives and the world.
And as all of this happens, festival participants have a chance -- in different ways -- to examine their own faith.
“There’s something that happens at the Festival of Faith and Writing where we still surprise each other in that space,” said Cockrel.
“It’s a place for people to make genuine connections with people around stories and poems that have enlarged their vision of what it means to be human and a person of faith.”
In the opening keynote address, set for noon on Thursday, April 12, writer and educator Kwame Alexander will speak about “Saying Yes to the Writerly Life.” The presentation by the New York Times best-selling young adult writer is free and open to the public and will be held in the college’s Van Noord Arena.
Written in verse, his novel Crossover received the 2015 Newbery Medal. The story follows two African-American twin brothers who share a love for basketball but find themselves drifting apart as they head into their junior high school years. They also run into many obstacles that they must overcome.
In a blog on the website The Twelve, Debra Rienstra suggests books to read by writers coming to the Festival of Faith and Writing this year.
“I offer you a few recommendations, drawn from this year’s featured authors. No one can read everything by all our authors, so these are just a few treasures from my idiosyncratic explorations,” she writes.
Here are some of her recommendations:
Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (2010) by Bill McKibben, “one of the most persuasive and eloquent environmental writers in the world. His 1989 The End of Nature sounded an early claxon about climate change, and he has persisted as a writer. Also: Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist (2013), which might be described as a memoir of activism.”
Fingerprints of God: What Science Is Learning about the Brain and Spiritual Experience by Barbara Bradley Hagerty. “Of everything I’ve read for the festival so far, this book is my favorite. Is God real? Is there more than this? What do we know about the neurophysiology of spirituality? Those are the questions this distinguished and highly experienced journalist set out to answer, and the result is a fascinating, even breathtaking narrative.”
Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat. “This Haitian-American novelist, memoirist, and young adult writer helps honor the stories of the Haitian diaspora. Danticat’s first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), follows young Sophie from her home in Haiti to Brooklyn, where she reunites with her mother and begins to grapple with the demons haunting the whole line of women in her family.”
My Utmost: A Devotional Memoir by Macy Halford. “If you are a fan of Oswald Chambers’s beloved devotional classic, My Utmost for His Highest, you will love this combination memoir/literary biography.”
Strangers Podcast with Lea Thau. “What used to be an almost exclusively book-centered festival has recently been expanding into other forms of word-art, including the podcast. Lea Thau is the genius behind the storytelling subculture and podcast The Moth, and she recently founded a new podcast called Strangers.”
Belonging Creates and Undoes Us Both by Padraig O’Tuama. “A poet and theologian, O’Tuama has worked through the Corrymeela Community to create spaces for face-to-face healing and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.”
Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved) by Kate Bowler, a historian of religion at Duke Divinity School. “Her 2013 book on the prosperity gospel in America, Blessed, received swoony reviews far beyond scholarly religious circles. But her new book, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved), is deeply personal. Living a happy life at work and home, she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.”
“And there’s so much more!” writes Rienstra. “Fleming Rutledge with her tour de force, The Crucifixion. Jen Hatmaker with her latest hot-seller, Of Mess and Moxie. A bevy of young religion journalists including Jonathan Merritt, Emma Green, and Sarah Pulliam-Bailey. The film producer Abigail Disney, director of The Armor of Light.”
Visit the festival website to register and to check out the schedule, full list of speakers, and more information.
