Image Issue 52 Is Now Available
The winter issue of the print version of Image features great new art and writing: the electrically vibrant paintings of Cornwall-based painter Louise McClary; poet Scott Cairns’s keynote address on the body of Christ, the suffering of innocents, and tasting the kingdom from the 2006 Glen Workshop; Ann Copeland’s braided memoir of vocation in the religious life, music, and family; an interview with National Book Award-winning novelist Alice McDermott on miracles, ice floes, and ordinary saints; a review of Pushcart editor Bill Henderson’s new memoir in hymns; short stories from prison, Czarist Russia, and the San Fernando Valley; poetry by Margaret Gibson; and much more. Issue 52 is hitting mailboxes now.

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Wrestling with the Angel: Art and Religion in the Twentieth Century
January 26-27, 2007
As the title of this two-day symposium suggests, the interaction of art and religion in the twentieth century has been not so much a battle, but a wrestling-a tangling of wills, involving both pain and intimacy, that does not end until one has given the other its blessing. Over the course of the weekend, panelists and presenters will explore the fruitful ways in which art and religion have wrestled during the last century. The symposium takes place in two of New York City 's vital venues for art and religion: the Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA) and Fordham University's Center for Religion and Culture. The first event, an interdisciplinary panel called "Why Can't We All Get Along?", takes place on Friday, January 26 at Fordham University, followed by a keynote address, "Violence, the Sacred and the Hidden God" given by Professor David Freedberg of Columbia University. Saturday morning will open with a presentation at the Museum of Biblical Art , and lectures and papers will focus on the art featured in Biblical Art in a Secular Century, the exhibit currently on display at the museum. The symposium is free and open to the public. To RSVP, call 212.636.7347 or email ReligCulture@Fordham.edu .

For more information visit the Fordham Center for Religion and Culture or MOBIA's website.

The Fork Without Hunger by Laurie Lamon
In Laurie Lamon’s debut collection, “The Fork without Hunger,” green things recede, the land becomes barren, and a sense of loss begins to ripen. Spare and lovely, these poems dwell on decay—the “bulbs buried in darkness,” the “rustle / of dead leaves, the cells / breaking through soil and ice”—and the steady hum of seasonal change. But don’t be lulled by their loveliness; they also cut to the quick with one little word: pain. Assuming the title role in a series of poems that punctuate the collection, pain is the steady companion of loss, the inquisitive force that distills the world to its throbbing essentials. In “Pain Tries to Think of Something,” a personified pain “Rubs its knees together, feeling / nerves flair. Tries to think / of literature physics shopping / malls lighted all night cups / of milk it exhorts its children / to drink every morning.” For Lamon, pain can provoke an acute focus, a sharpness of vision that becomes a kind of revelation. And seeing, after all, is the task of the poet. As when the narrator bends over a wasp she has just killed, and “gathered / what I could not feel of emptiness / and weight the body curled / around itself: residential, sweet.” Or when, lifting out the dead flowers from a vase, she thinks of “Demeter and Mary / outlasting what must have felt, / at first, like desertion.” Lamon shows us that absence and death are entangled with delight. Pain is a forerunner of holy insight. In the closing poem, “Pain Thinks of the Beautiful Table,” it at once considers “the fork without hunger without interruption” and “going for days without the beautiful table.” In letting pain settle in, we know fullness and loss, recognizing what it is to stretch after and relinquish the promised feast, into eternity.

Buy it here.

Image Film Festival: Boy Meets Girl
January 26-28, 2007
What does it mean to be committed to someone for the rest of your life? Does dating feel like a special form of torture to you? Can men and women be best friends without falling in love? This year’s Image/Seattle Pacific University film festival “Boy Meets Girl: Romance and Reality in the Movies” attempts to answer the eternal questions about what it means to fall in or out of love. Five films will be screened over the weekend—Tootsie, Shadowlands, When Harry Met Sally, The Awful Truth, and The War of the Roses. After each film, a panel of SPU faculty and students will lead a discussion of the film and field comments and questions from the audience. All films will be screened in Upper Gwinn Commons on the Seattle Pacific University campus.

For more information—including a schedule, descriptions of the films, and directions—click here. The event is free and open to the public.

Correction: In the Town of David Website
The January 1st issue of ImageUpdate featured In the Town of David, a striking independent Christmas album recorded by a trio from Vancouver, British Columbia. Unfortunately, the link we provided did not work! We don’t want you to miss out on this great album, so here is the correct website where you can hear audio samples and get more information. The CD is available by e-mailing peter@peterlagrand.com.

Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai
Icons were central to medieval Christian worship and continue to be a compelling form of religious art. Now you can see some of the oldest sacred objects from the world’s largest repository of Byzantine icons, St. Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai. Several icons have traveled from Egypt for a special exhibition at the Getty museum in Los Angeles, open through March 4, 2007. The exhibition explores how icons draw us beyond themselves, opening a door to worship. The museum also features several events connected to the exhibit, from lectures and panel discussions to artist-at-work demonstrations.

For more information, visit the exhibition website here.

If you have information other ImageUpdate readers might find interesting, share it here! Do you have a question that you hope a member of the ImageUpdate community might have the answer to? Ask it here. Have your messages posted by sending an email to gwolfe@spu.edu.

The Great Divorce Opens Off Broadway
Magis Theatre Company in New York City presents C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, January 18–February 11, 2007. See this life changing show that presents a magical bus ride through Heaven and Hell that will change your view of life on Earth forever. As a character in the play says... "We think nothing of religion here, we think only of Christ." Check out our video at YouTube. There is a 15% discount off the $30 ticket price for groups of 10 people or more. Come and experience C.S. Lewis's classic allegorical tale! For tickets, click here.

Lenten Playwriting contest
Are you a playwright interested in seeing your words come to life? A group of young adults at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Seattle is looking for script submissions. The chosen script will be performed at St. Paul’s on March 25th. The scripts should be 10 pages or less and center around one of four Lenten themes: liberation and bondage, death and rebirth, community and self, journey and loss. The entry deadline is February 17th.  For writer’s guidelines contact Julie Newberry by e-mail at InPreparation10@yahoo.com.

Naomi Hirahara Readings in Seattle
Author and former Milton Center fellow Naomi Hirahara will be in Seattle at the end of this month for several readings. Her mysteries follow curmudgeonly Japanese American gardener Mas Arai as he is drawn into the worlds of crime and its detection, weaving the tensions of Japanese American culture together with themes of social change for a series that is not your average investigative fare. The readings will take place on Wednesday, January 31, 7 PM at Third Place Books in the Lake Forest Park Towne Centre (17171 Bothell Way NE, Lake Forest Park, WA, 206-366-3333), and Saturday, February 3, Noon-2 PM at the Seattle Mystery Bookshop (117 Cherry St., Seattle, 626-587-5737). For more information on events or Naomi Hirahara, see her website at www.naomihirahara.com.

Editor’s note: Hirahara’s first mystery, Summer of the Big Bachi, was written while on the Milton Center Fellowship, a program that provides Christian authors an opportunity to finish their first book-length manuscript. The program is now sponsored by Image, and applications are available on the website. Click here for more information.

First Annual Faith and Values Screenwriting Competition 
Ambassador Communications Inc., the home of Christian screenwriting and the Christian Screenwriters’ Newsletter, invites screenwriters to enter the 1st Annual Faith and Values Screenwriting Competition, honoring the best in faith-based TV Series Pilots and Feature Length Screenplays. In addition to monetary prizes, we have prizes from great sponsors like Deepfeedback.com, Scriptcopier.com, Hollywoodlitsales.com, Soyouwannasellascript.com, and Faithwriters.com. The winning scripts will be considered for representation by a WGA agent and will be read by Fox Faith and ten other faith-based production companies. Submissions must be postmarked by February 1, 2007. To enter the contest, please click here or email info@ambassadorcommunications.biz or call 204-292-4095.

Seattle Pacific University Job Opening:
Senior Designer, Response Magazine
Seattle Pacific University is seeking an outstanding, experienced graphic designer to design and produce SPU’s award-winning institutional magazine, Response. Responsibilities include: designing and producing Response, participating in the development of marketing strategy for Response, and related duties. To learn more about the job responsibilities, and the required qualifications, visit www.spu.edu/depts/hr. Or contact Kathleen Abbott, SPU Human Resources, 206-281-2591 or abbottk@spu.edu.

Deadlines, Deadlines, Deadlines: MFA, Shaw & Milton Center Fellowships
Tis the season to be...filling out applications! Image has three wonderful programs for the literarily and artistically inclined, for the young—and the not-quite-as-young. A summer fellowship, a world-class MFA program, and a yearlong postgraduate writing fellowship. If none of these are right for you, pass the word along to anyone you know who might be interested!

The Luci Shaw Summer Fellowship Deadline: February 1
The purpose of the Luci Shaw Fellowship is to expose a promising undergraduate or graduate student to the world of literary publishing and the nonprofit arts organization, and to introduce fellows to the contemporary dialogue about art and faith that surrounds Image, its programs, its contributors, and its peer organizations.

Read more about the Fellowship and download the application here.

The Seattle Pacific University MFA in Creative Writing Deadline: February 15
Now in its second year, the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at Seattle Pacific University is thriving under the direction of Image editor Greg Wolfe and the distinguished writers who make up the program faculty. The MFA at SPU is a creative writing program for apprentice writers—both Christians and those of other traditions—who not only want to pursue excellence in the craft of writing but also place their work within the larger context of the Judeo-Christian tradition of faith. Students work with faculty mentors during the year by exchanging manuscripts and critiques—and all come together for two intensive ten-day residencies each year, one alongside Image’s Glen Workshop and one on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. This summer we will graduate our first cohort and admit a new batch of MFA students selected from a competitive pool of applications. The deadline to apply for summer 2007 admission is February 15.

Click here for a link to the online application.

The Milton Center Postgraduate Fellowship Deadline: March 15
The Milton Center postgraduate fellowship brings emerging writers of Christian commitment to Image, where their primary goal is to complete their first book-length manuscript in fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. During their time at the Center, fellows will have a rich experience of literary and spiritual community; they will interact with the editorial staff of Image and the English department at Seattle Pacific University, participate in the Friday writer's workshop, and enjoy the lively literary scene in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

For more information and to download an application, click here.

Register Now for the 2007 Glen Workshop!
"God of the Desert: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam through the Prism of Art"
July 29 - August 5, 2007

The Glen Workshop is an illuminating conference on the arts and religion, where participants practice and strengthen their craft and vision in community. This weeklong event combines the best elements of a workshop, an arts festival, and a symposium. By exploring this year's theme, "God of the Desert: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam through the Prism of Art," participants will share a common ground for discussion during the week. This year's faculty includes illustrator Barry Moser, playwright Mark St. Germain, poets Scott Cairns and Daniel Tobin, musicians Linford Detweiler and Karin Berquist of Over the Rhine, fiction writer Moira Crone, calligrapher Timothy Botts, ceramics artist Ginger Geyer, and spiritual writer Ann McCutchan. A seminar class, "Peoples of the Book," will be led by Rodger Kamenetz. Afternoons and evenings at the Glen feature faculty readings, lectures, and presentations. Guest speakers Jamal Rahman, George Dardess, Rodger Kamenetz, and Scott Cairns will explore the relationships among the three Abrahamic traditions and the role art and story play in each during selected evening sessions. Each evening concludes with an ecumenical worship service that incorporates the arts. This year's musician-in-residence, Pierce Pettis, will be giving a concert as well as playing during worship throughout the week. Please note that class sizes are limited: don't wait too long to register!

To register for the Glen Workshop, or to find out more information, click here .

A brochure will be printed and mailed in early February. If you are on the Image subscriber list, you'll automatically receive a brochure. If you'd like to have one mailed to you, send us an e-mail by clicking here.

Image T-Shirts, Mugs, and More 
Looking around at all the other cool shirts out there, we’ve finally decided we needed our own—and not just shirts. Also Image hats, mugs, bags, lunch boxes. Well, not lunch boxes. But the other stuff is for real. These are lovely soft cotton shirts (the Image staff each have several) handsomely printed by the good people at CafePress.com and available in many sizes and colors (collect them all!). Most feature Dostoyevsky’s mysterious dictum “Beauty will save the world”—which comes from a tantalizingly undeveloped fragment from one of his journals and is also a notion he explores in his novel The Idiot. We’ve adopted it as a rallying cry for Image’s mission—because we believe that good art can be a wellspring of renewal for religious faith, and in turn, for all of creation. A few of the shirts say “Presenting the Realism of Distances Since 1989,” which we admit is a little obscure. It comes from an essay of Flannery O’Connor’s in which she writes, “In the novelist’s case, prophecy is a matter of seeing near things with their extensions of meaning and thus of seeing far things close up. The prophet is a realist of distances.”  We think that idea can be extended from the novel to all art—and that it’s Image’s job to bring that prophetic art to the world. And 1989? That’s when the pilot issue was published.

Check out the merchandise at Café Press. Wear them in good health!

Subscribe (and a whole lot more) Online
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