by Richard A. Kauffman
Judging by my reading habits, the memoir is my favorite form of literature. I’ve read scores over the last 15 years.
A Private History of Awe by Scott Russell Sanders is my favorite. I first encountered Sanders via his collections of essays. I was drawn to his sense of place and rootedness, his nature mysticism and Quaker sensibilities and his incredible powers of observation and description. His memoir is a love story of sorts, an account of …
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In Our Next Issues . . .
July 16, 2010November 2011 -- Playing at Peace. Memoir essays by Goshen College students on growing up Mennonite. Featured Poet: Vienna Wagner, Notre Dame student. Guest Editor: Sara Wakefield
January 2012 -- Creative Nonfiction and Memoir. Open submissions. Deadline for consideration: November 1, 2011.
March 2012 -- New Fiction. Deadline for consideration: February 1, 2012.
Forthcoming issues on Documentary film, the "Inkslingers," creative work from Mennonite/s Writing, "Visitors," New Playwrights . . .
Calls for Submissions:
Our mission is to publish work about Mennonite literature or literature by writers who have a connetion with Mennonite (in the broad sense of the term) …
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Serial Fiction Issue, Jeff Gundy Poetry
July 16, 2010Check out the creative and critical work in our biggest issue yet--on a best-selling, yet critically overlooked topic: serial fiction by and about Mennonites: Mystery, Science Fiction, Romance . . .
In the current issue of the Journal of CMW, edited by Ervin Beck, read excerpts of new work by mystery writer Judy Clemens and science fiction writer Karl Schoeder, as well as lively analyses of mystery and romance fiction by Beth Graybill, Kyle Schlabach and Michelle Thurlow. Also, a valuable guide to further reading is the first-ever bibliography of serial fiction by and about Amish and Mennonites by Ervin …
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Former Goshen College President J. Lawrence Burkholder dies
June 24, 2010In 1971 Burkholder left the Ivy League to lead the small college in Northern Indiana he knew intimately. He returned to Goshen College to serve as its 11th president with the conviction that "Mennonites had something to contribute to the world, and I wanted to be part of it," he said.
Burkholder, who served as president until 1984, began his presidency with a simple religious service and the planting of 138 trees around campus. "I wanted to bring beauty to a campus that seemed somewhat barren," he said. "And I hoped to soften and humanize the image of the …
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Inspiration for Mennonite Writers
June 24, 2010Old news for Mennonite writers from John Updike in 1951: "We do not need men like Proust and Joyce; men like this are a luxury, an aded fillip that an abundant culture can produce only after the more basic literary need has been filled. This age needs rather men like Shakespeare, or Milton, or Pope; men who are filled with the strength of their cultures and do not transcend the limits of their age, but, working within the times, bring what is peculiar to the moment to glory. We need great artists who are willing to accept restrictions, and who …
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Di Brandt wins Gabrielle Roy Prize for Literary Criticism in Canada
June 21, 2010
Wider Boundaries of Daring:
The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women’s Poetry
Di Brandt, editor, and Barbara Godard, editorPublished by Wilfrid Laurier University Press
has won the
2009 ACQL Gabrielle Roy Prize for Literary
Criticism in Canadasee: http://www.brandonu.ca/app/news/home/home-20100610-001.html?uri=%2Fnews%2Findex.html
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Literary Reviews in the April & July Issues of MQR
June 15, 2010April 2010 Issue
Some New Voices in Mennonite Poetry: A Review Essay by Ann Hostetler
Keith Ratzlaff on Jean Janzen
Ami Regier on Leonard Neufeldt
Shirley Showalter on Connie Braun
http://www.goshen.edu/mqr/pastissues/Apr10.html
July 2010 Issue
Di Brandt on Yorifumi Yaguchi
Ervin Beck on Ken Reed
Wilbur Birky on Judy Clemens
See the Book Revew link on the MQR website
http://www.goshen.edu/mqr/pastissues/July10.html
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Mennonite Life Resurrected!
June 11, 2010June 14, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mennonite Life returns from the dead in online form
NORTH NEWTON, KAN. – Once again, Mennonite Life has risen from the dead.
Since 1946, when Bethel College began publishing the journal, Mennonite Life has been devoted to exploring and developing Mennonite experience. Its intended audience is scholars and academics as well as a wider literate readership interested in Mennonite matters.
From 1946-99, Mennonite Life was published in paper form. Starting with the March 2000 issue, it became a free, online-only journal. Over the decades of its existence, Mennonite Life has undergone many transitions in …
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Recent Reviews of Mennonite Literature - Connie Braun
June 10, 2010Connie Braun, The Steppes are the Colour of Sepia: A Mennonite Memoir. Vancouver: Ronsdale Press, 2008.
REVIEWER
Jeff Gundy, Bluffton University, Bluffton, Ohio
http://www.grebel.uwaterloo.ca/academic/cgreview/reviews/01-09_mennonite_memoir.shtml
REVIEWER
Shirley Showalter, Vice President for Programs, Fetzer Institute
The the review in context at Shirley Showalter's Blog, 100 Memoirs: http://www.100memoirs.com/2010/05/another-mennonite-memoir-the-steppes-are-the-colour-of-sepia/
and in
Read Connie Braun's essay, “Silence, Memory and Imagination as Story: Canadian Mennonite Life Writing," in the Archives of the CMW Journal on this site.
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Richard Kauffman on Memoirs and the Mystery of Life
June 2, 2010See the blogpost in its original setting at
http://theolog.org/2010/05/memoirs-and-mystery-of-life.html
May 12, 2010
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This Hidden Thing, novel by Dora Dueck, just published
May 30, 2010Dora Dueck’s second novel This Hidden Thing was recently published by CMU [Canadian Mennonite University] Press in Winnipeg. “The young woman standing outside the prosperous Winnipeg house that day in 1927 knew she must have work. Her family depended on it. But Maria Klassen had no idea that her new life as a domestic would mark her for the rest of her days. This Hidden Thing reminds us how dangerous and powerful secrets can be. This lyrical and moving novel offers one woman’s compelling, ordinary, and surprising life.” The novel is grounded in Dora Dueck’s earlier research, including many interviews, …