Sara Zarr Short-listed for National Book Award

Last week we got the news that Sara Zarr’s novel Story of a Girl (which we can’t help but mention she developed at Image’s very own Glen Workshop) was one of five nominees for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature. We’re thrilled for Sara—and tremendously proud, too. Set in a depressed suburb of San Francisco, the novel is an unsentimental look at an adolescent girl’s struggle to outgrow an undeserved reputation as school slut. The voice is wry and often comic, but beneath it, Zarr’s approach to her characters is tender and hopeful. The novel offers a beautiful study of how someone who has developed a very tough exterior can gradually be melted. (ImageUpdate ran a fuller blurb in back February.) Now, Zarr has four short weeks to find a dress to wear to the awards ceremony in Manhattan, where she’ll be meeting writers she admires and “generally trying not to act like a wallflower or an idiot.” (But we know she’ll be poised and articulate.) The Glen Workshop played an important role for Zarr, who writes: “I don’t want to get gooshy, but the Glen I first brought the book to (2002) and the Glens in between have played no small part in my ability to keep forging ahead even when it seemed, in the words of the Magic 8 Ball, ‘all signs point to NO.’ Not feeling alone and, more importantly, coming to understand divine endorsement of the creative process, has helped more than I can ever describe.” There you have it: Image programs make a difference for gifted writers—and through them influence the larger reading world. Zarr’s second novel, Sweethearts, will be out from Little, Brown next February.

For more, visit www.SaraZarr.com.

Image #55 Is Here!
The fall issue of Image should appear on your doorstep soon, if it hasn’t already. (If you don’t subscribe to the print Image, for goodness sake, why not?) The issue includes a special section on a topic we’ve wanted to investigate for a while now: “Why Believe in God?” In light of the recent spate of books attacking organized religion as a malignant social force, we thought it was high time. We asked a group of poets, writers, musicians, and other artists to write to us about what drives their faith. The result is not theology, argument, or apologetics; these are personal meditations, some anguished, some assured, some comic, some poignant, all provocative. The idea isn’t to defend the faith from its bombastic recent detractors (Dawkins et al.), but rather to humanize it, to give expression to what makes it so compelling despite the familiar old objections. Contributors to the special section include Doris Betts, B.H. Fairchild, Ron Hansen, Linford Detweiler (of Over the Rhine), Richard Rodriguez, Wim Wenders, and more. The issue also includes: fiction by A.G. Mojtabai (in which a very bad egg experiences a moment of conversion through an encounter with a very special parrot), Anthony Bukoski, and Elizabeth Smither; an interview with theologian Walter Brueggmann on the imagination, retirement, and the prophetic voice; the haunting, surreal miniatures of Barry Krammes; the monumental marble sculpture of Stephen Cox; poetry by Ilya Kaminsky and others; Margaret Gibson’s memoir of a daughter’s secret crime; and new poetry in review.

Click here to see the full table of contents and order a copy.

The Lives of Others
Set in Germany in 1984, The Lives of Others is a political thriller depicting life in a pre-Glasnost East Berlin. As the film begins, Gerd Weisler, a member of the Stasi (secret police) is assigned to investigate renowned playwright, Georg Dreyman and his partner, actress Christa-Maria Sieland. The assignment arrives couched in rhetoric about Dreyman’s suspected anti-party activities, but its true origin is soon revealed—Minister Bruno Hempf, involved in a coercive affair with Sieland, has ordered the investigation to give credence to blacklisting Dreyman. Weisler, for his part, remains a steadfast Stasi officer and carries out his wiretapping and videoing duties with unquestioning loyalty. As evidenced by his pristinely organized apartment, Weisler’s life is small, controlled, and dust-free. In taking up the assignment with meticulous rigor, however, something begins to happen. While listening to the wiretaps and watching the video footage of Dreyman, Sieland, and their group of artist-friends, Weisler begins to fall under the influence of what his barren life is lacking: art, passion, and—most importantly—love. Through a series of unsettling events, Weisler’s encounter with the lives of the other characters propels the plot forward to its sad and ultimately redemptive end. Starring Ulrich Muhe, Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck, and Thomas Thieme, and written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others vividly portrays “the transformative power of art, while elucidating the conflict between ideology and conscience.” Now available on DVD, The Lives of Others was released to worldwide acclaim, including an Oscar in 2007 for Best Foreign Language Film.

For more information, click here.

Circling My Mother by Mary Gordon
Pierre Bonnard was a painter of the beautiful. "People always speak of submission to nature," he said. "There is also submission to the picture.” In her intricate memoir, Circling My Mother, Mary Gordon evokes Bonnard as she limns her mother's life from various painterly angles: as a woman who worked and was proud of it; who loved and respected priests; who was perhaps destroyed by her sisters; who was crippled by polio and, later, loneliness and drinking. Anna Gagliano Gordon died in her nineties, tended by her daughter, insensible to the world. In Gordon's incisive prose, Anna emerges as both a woman of the imperfect world and as a citizen of mid-twentieth-century American Catholicism—that triumphant, contemptuous country. The trajectory of Anna's life is informed not only by Gordon's episodic reflections, but also by observations about cultural milieu. Spanning most of the twentieth century, Anna's life paralleled that of many ethnic Catholic women of the working-class Northeast. Raised in an Irish/Italian family more clannish than loving (they had "the quick rage of starvelings"), Anna prided herself on work, pragmatism and an unsparing, religious nature. Her greatest extravagance was her love for the Church and for Gordon's father, a conservative Catholic intellectual. Her life evokes a recognition of the sacred and profane, married in service of a "truth eternal and unchanging in its application." For those of us of a certain age who are its children, the Catholic world of Gordon's parents seems to have vanished, reduced to a banal nostalgia for stereotypes. A gift of this memoir—in addition to its attempt to locate the past and thus Gordon's mother—is that it testifies to the flawed, encompassing beauty of this world. "I want writing to be unconnected to good behavior," Gordon notes, "as a beautiful woman is irresponsible in her beauty." With this perspective, Circling My Mother surpasses constraint and renders a life both flawed and beautiful.

Buy the book here.

Face Down On Concrete: A Conversation about Hope, Theology, and Art with Robert Deeble and Friends
October 26, 2007, 7:00 p.m., Seattle Pacific University Art Gallery
On Friday October 26, come join a conversation with working Seattle artists about the creative life and the agency of hope. In a world that bears the wounds of despair, how does an artist step fully into a place of darkness and see into and through it? What is the role of an artist of faith, as observer and prophet? Following a presentation by theologian Dr. Jürgen Moltmann, author of Theology of Hope, at Seattle Pacific University on Oct 24, musician Robert Deeble, visual artist Laura Lasworth, communications director for Argos International & musician Sean Dimond, and poet Jennifer Maier will host an evening of reflection about their encounters with hope as artists, through their own and others' work. The evening will include readings and musical performances, all held against the backdrop of the exhibition Hope: Open/Closed, featuring pieces by area artists. Refreshments to follow.

For a map of SPU, click here. The Art Center is building number 3. For more information about the lecture with Dr. Jürgen Moltmann and The Day of Common Learning at SPU, click here. (Attendance is encouraged, but not required.)

For more information contact Laura Lasworth at (206) 281-3441 or click here.

Wayne Forte at the Signs of Life Gallery
Wayne Forte's paintings are full of light and playfulness, but at the same time they're unshakably grounded and solid. His canvases teem with motion, life, and color. In service of his community at the megachurch he attends in southern California (and where his paintings often appear), he strives to find a balance between common symbols and fresh vision: wristwatches, fruit, animals, plants, angels, cityscapes, and Superman form exuberant constellations in these collages of color and symbol. And everywhere throughout is the human figure: blocky, earthbound, fleshy, and beautiful. In his new exhibition at the Signs of Life gallery in Lawrence, Kansas, Forte explores a way of understanding narrative counter to the modernist impulse to exclude the divine, through paintings styled as liturgical banners. The show continues through Thanksgiving.

For more information, go to the gallery web page.

This section lists ongoing exhibits and events that have been featured in previous issues of ImageUpdate. Click on the links for more information.

The Art of Forgiveness: Images of the Prodigal Son draws together wide-ranging works depicting the biblical story of the prodigal son. The exhibit will be at the Museum of Biblical Art through February 17, 2008. For more information, click here.

Hope: An Invitational Show draws together the works of fifteen artists on the theme of hope. The exhibit will continue through October 31, 2007 at the Lookout Gallery in Vancouver, BC, on the campus of Regent College. Find more about the exhibit here.

Image and the Glen Workshop Featured in ChristianWeek
Just in time for our lecture tour north of the border, ChristianWeek, a periodical for Christians in Canada, has published a feature on Image and the Glen Workshop, our summer artists’ program in Santa Fe. The author, Peter Menzies, is the former publisher of the Calgary Herald. He attended the Glen for the first time this summer, where he experienced the Image community in full force. In the article, Menzies reflects on the commitment of the artists he met at the Glen, and the mission of Image to carry a rich legacy of faith and art into a culture in need of a renaissance. Says Menzies, “Those who attend [the Glen Workshop], professional or amateur, seek the revelation of beauty and therefore meaning in life—something that for many appears lost in a world that can no longer name its great writers, sculptors, visual artists or poets.… The pilgrims of Santa Fe hold on to the prayer that it is art that can inspire substance where pop culture offers only poverty.”

To read the full article, click here. Stay tuned for announcements for Glen 2008!

Image is Coming to Canada. Mark Your Calendars!
This fall Image editor Gregory Wolfe will be traveling to four Canadian cities—Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and Winnipeg—to spread the word about the journal and to strengthen ties with Canadian artists, writers, and those who are working for cultural transformation. In Winnipeg on October 25, Image will host a special evening at the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery where Gregory Wolfe will give a talk on the power of beauty to nourish our common life, communicate faith, and renew our culture. Wolfe will also be giving a presentation in Calgary (date to be announced). In Vancouver and Toronto Wolfe will be appearing at two special book launch events that Image is co-sponsoring. These events, featuring Kathleen Norris as keynote speaker, will celebrate the publication of God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas, a beautifully illustrated collection of daily meditations for the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, written by Norris, Luci Shaw, Eugene Peterson, Scott Cairns and others. Image will co-sponsor the book launch events, held in Toronto on November 13 and Vancouver on November 14. We are grateful to several Canadian donors for making these appearances possible and are looking forward to getting more Canadian readers—and more Canadian contributors to our pages.

For information about Gregory Wolfe’s appearances in Calgary and Winnipeg, contact Julie Mullins at (206) 281-2988 or jmullins@imagejournal.org.

For details of the God With Us book launch events in Vancouver and Toronto, call 778-995-9424 or e-mail greg.pennoyer@incarnation.ca.