S111.
Faith, Family, & Fanaticism: Women Writing Religion
Saturday, March 26, 2022
9:00 am to 10:15 am
Many writers and academics are deeply influenced by our faith of origin yet are often dismissed by society as secularists. Women writers who explore Catholicism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism in poetry, prose, and hybrid forms will discuss writing about faith in this era of rising faith-based fanaticism. How do we approach topics like spiritual abuse? How do we keep from self-censoring? Why is it important to share our stories despite the social cost?
Participants
Deirdre Sugiuchi spent her adolescence in a faith-based troubled teen facility and is writing her reform school memoir, "Unreformed." Her work has been featured in Dame and Electric Literature.
Anjali Enjeti is the author of the collection of essays Southbound and the novel The Parted Earth. She teaches in the MFA program at Reinhardt University. Her other writing has appeared in the Oxford American, Harper's Bazaar, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Boston Globe, and elsewhere.
Liz Harmer is the author of two novels: The Amateurs (2018) and Strange Loops (2022). She is at work on a memoir about her experience with and family history of mental illness.
Sakinah Hofler is a fiction writer, poet, and playwright. She has won the Manchester Fiction Prize, the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers, and the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award. She teaches creative writing at Loyola University.
Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, author of Imperfect Tense (poems), four education books, and numerous articles and essays, was awarded 2015–2021 NEA Big Read grants, a Fulbright (2014), and artist residency (2017) in Mexico. She is professor of language and literacy education at the University of Georgia.
