Religion and Literature in the American Southwest

Art & Soul
Thursday, March 14-Sunday, March 17, 2002

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• Program Description
• Speakers
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Program Description

Major subject areas will be writing and publishing, religion and literature in the American Southwest, religion and the arts, creativity and spirituality, and writing for peace and justice.

Speakers

Fredrick Barton, University of New Orleans

Award-winning journalist and film critic, winner of William Faulkner Prize for Fiction, and author of the novels With Extreme Prejudice and The El Cholo Feeling Passes, Barton will be making his third appearance at Art & Soul. Barton is also Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and UNO.

Margaret Becker

One of the most distinguished and multi-faceted of contemporary Christian musicians, Margaret has won three Dove awards, has received four Grammy nominations, has charted fourteen #1 Christian hits, and is also the author of the books With New Eyes and Growing Up Together. This year marks Becker's second appearance at Art & Soul.

Robert Olen Butler, Florida State University

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the short story collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Butler is the author of nine novels and an additional collection of stories, a four-time honoree in Best American Short Stories, and a six-time honoree in New Stories from the South.

Rev. Will D. Campbell

A pioneer in civil rights, Campbell has been a chaplain and Baptist minister, the subject of the 2000 PBS documentary God's Will, and the author of the National Book Award-nominated Brother to a Dragonfly, The Glad River, The Convention, Soul Among Lions: Musings of a Bootleg Preacher, and in spring 2002, a new edition of Providence. Rev. Campbell was the first recipient of the Alex Haley Award for Distinguished Tennessee Writers.

Marion Castleberry, Baylor University

Director of Graduate Theatre Studies at Baylor University, Castleberry has worked professionally as an actor, director, dramaturge, and voice and movement coach in more than one hundred fifty productions, including directing several plays by Horton Foote. He is currently writing a biography of the Texas dramatist, entitled Voices From Home: A Biography of Horton Foote.

Diane Connolly

Former religion editor for The Dallas Morning News, Connolly is editor of ReligionLink, which gives journalists across the country resources to write about religion in public life. It is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts through the Religion Newswriters Foundation

Robert (Bob) Darden, III, Baylor University

Editor of the religion and humor magazine The Door and author of numerous works of nonfiction and fiction including Mad Man in Waco and I, Jesus.

William Virgil Davis, Baylor University

Writer-in-Residence at Baylor University, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and author of the collections One Way to Reconstruct the Scene and Winter Light, as well as books on R.S. Thomas and Robert Bly.

Elizabeth Dewberry, Florida State University

Author of the novels Break the Heart of Me and Many Things Have Happened Since He Died, and the plays "Flesh and Blood," "Four Joans," and "A Fire-Eater," and co-author of the stage adaptation of Many Things Have Happened Since He Died.

Greg Garrett, Baylor University

Winner of the William Faulkner Prize for Fiction and author of the novel Free Bird and forty works of short fiction, Garrett also directs Art & Soul and the annual Beall Poetry Festival at Baylor University.

Diane Glancy, Macalester College

This Oklahoma Cherokee writer is a past winner of the American Book Award and author of books of prose, poetry, and fiction, including Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears, Monkey Secret, The Relief of America, and Claiming Breath.

Don Graham, University of Texas, Austin

Regents Professor of English at the University of Texas, author of Giant Country: Essays on Texas, Cowboys and Cadillacs: How Hollywood Looks at Texas, and Texas: A Literary Culture, and regular contributor to Texas Monthly.

David Lyle Jeffrey, Baylor University

Distinguished Professor of English at Baylor University and author of many works on religion and literature including the seminal People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture.

Marie Chapian Jordan, Mira Costa College

Author of over twenty five non-fiction books translated into fifteen languages and, most recently, a book of poems, Slow Dance on Stilts, Jordan recently won the Sand Diego Book Award for her unpublished novel, I Love You Like a Tomato.

Joan Logghe

A resident of Espanola, New Mexico, Logghe has been an active part of the renaissance of New Mexico's poetry as former poetry editor to Mothering magazine and author of the books Twenty Years in Bed with the Same Man, Blessed Resistance: Poems, and Sofia: Poems.

Bret Lott, College of Charleston

Author of the Oprah Book Club selection Jewel, and the novels The Hunt Club, The Man Who Owned Vermont, and Reed's Beach, as well as the critically-acclaimed short story collections How to Get Home and A Dream of Old Leaves and the memoir Fathers, Sons, and Brothers. This is his second appearance at Art & Soul.

S. Dixon McDowell, University of Southern Mississippi

Associate Professor of Radio, Television, and film at USM, McDowell's scholarly interests include Pulitzer Prize- and Academy Award-winning dramatic writer, Horton Foote, about whom he has produced and directed a feature documentary.

Geoff Moore

A development executive for Mad Chance Productions (Space Cowboys, Cats and Dogs, the upcoming Edward Norton/Robin Williams film Death to Smoochie, and George Clooney's directing debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Moore is a 1998 graduate of Baylor University.

Zoe Mullery

A creative writing Fellow at the Milton Center at Newman University, Mullery received her MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 1995 and currently teaches creative writing in the California state prisons. Her short stories have appeared in Transfer, Ink, Windhover, River Styx, online in Web Del Sol, and forthcoming in Puerto del Sol.

Marion Oettinger, San Antonio Museum of Art

Senior curator at SAMA, Oettinger is a cultural anthropologist specializing in Latin American folk art and religious images, and will speak at Art & Soul on the Virgen de Guadalupe

Laurin Porter, University of Texas-Arlington

Author of The Banished Prince: Time, Memory, and Ritual in the Late Plays of Eugene O'Neill and the forthcoming Orphan's Home: The Cycle Plays of Horton Foote. Her Articles on Foote appear in Resources for American Literary Study, Studies in American Drama, 1945-Present, and Horton Foote: A Casebook.

Martha Serpas, University of Tampa

A graduate of New York University, the Yale School of Divinity, and the University of Houston, Serpas specializes on the connections between religion and literature and on poetry, which she has published in numerous journals and in a new book of poems due out in March.

Lorenzo Thomas, University of Houston-Downtown

An authority on African-American culture, Thomas is also one of Texas' leading poets, with books including Extraordinary Measures, Sing the Sun Up: Creative Writing Ideas from African American Literature, The Bathers, and Chances Are Few. Thomas was featured in a 1999 special section of the African and African-American literary journal Callaloo.

Ryan Witt

A creative writing Fellow at the Milton Center at Newman University, Witt is a graduate from the University of Idaho's creative writing program and former managing editor of Fugue, has published poetry and fiction in Barrow Street and Fugue. At last year's conference, he presented a paper on Confucius and the creative writing classroom.

Gerald Wood, Carson-Newman College

Chair of the English Department at Carson-Newman College, author of Horton Foote and the Theatre of Intimacy, and editor of Selected One-Act Plays of Horton Foote and Horton Foote: A Casebook/

Ralph Wood, Baylor University

University of Religion and Literature at Baylor University, author of The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists and regular contributor to such publications as Christian Century.

Steve Zikman

Author of the highly acclaimed The Power of Travel: A Passport to Adventure, Discovery and Growth, and co-author of the best-selling series titles Chicken Soup for the Traveler's Soul and Chicken Soup for the Outdoor Soul. In addition to appearing on National Public Radio's "The Savvy Traveler" and other radio programs, Zikman is the online columnist for the National Business Travel Association and writes a syndicated column, "The Soulful Traveler™."

Schedule