Pre-reading for Opening Residency: Selections from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, Stephen King’s On Writing, Frederick Buechner’s Telling Secrets, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Claire Messud’s Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write: An Autobiography in Essays, and Marilyn McEntyre’s Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. Other potential reading could be Vanita Hampton Wright’s The Art of Spiritual Writing (or The Soul Tells a Story: Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life) or Robert Benson’s Dancing on the Head of a Pen.

Year One Residencies: In addition to determining student projects, the first year will focus on the theological grounding for the sacred work of writing, the holiness of words, and the sacramental reality of language. As a way of emphasizing the novel, our guest lecturer will be Leif Enger. Examples of likely reading (still to be finalized) might include selections from Eugene Peterson’s Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, a reading packet including theologically-oriented articles, selections from Rowan Williams’ Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction (Making of the Christian Imagination), Leif Enger’s Virgil Wander, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Emily St. J Mandel’s Station Eleven, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Kent Haruf’s Eventide, and Marilynne Robinson’s Lila.

Year Two Residencies: Our second year will deepen themes from year one in conjunction with exploring memoir and poetry, essay and sermons. Our guest lecturer will be Sophfronia Scott. Potential reading might include a packet of theologically-oriented articles, Mary Karr’s Lit, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, Shulem Deen’s All Who Go Do Not Return, Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance, Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox, St Therese of Lisieux’s Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of the Little Flower, Sarah Broom’s The Yellow House, Pat Conroy’s The Water is Wide, Fleming Rutledge’s Help My Unbelief, Samuel Proctor and William Watley’s Sermons from the Black Pulpit, Tom Kooser and Jim Harrison’s Braided Creek, and David Whyte’s The House of Belonging.

[A Writer’s Britain literary tour] October of year two will include our literary tour to London, Oxford, and other locals, led by Daniel Taylor, longtime English professor, essayist, award winning novelist, and world traveler. Daniel is the author of In Search of Sacred Places, Death Comes for the Deconstructionist, Tell Me a Story, The Myth of Certainty, The Skeptical Believer and numerous other titles and essays. Cost in addition to tuition will be $1975 + airfare 

Year Three Residencies: Our third year will explore the short story, while providing extended space for workshopping writing projects. Potential reading might include Zadie Smith’s Intimations, Andre Dubus’ Selected Stories, James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, George Saunders’ Tenth of December, and Brian Doyle’s One Long River of Song. The final residency will culminate in presentation of final projects.

[Writing Workshop Retreat] Our October residency for year three will be an offsite writing workshop retreat.

Ongoing: Between residencies, we will have one whole-cohort meeting via Zoom. Faculty mentors will host 2 Zoom meetings with their smaller writing group.

+this is a tentative overview and will adapt with the cohort’s needs