Bearing the Mystery: Twenty Years of Image, edited by Gregory Wolfe

Features
The Twentieth Anniversary Issue of Image is Here
He Said, She Said: A Web-Exclusive Interview with Greg and Suzanne Wolfe
Bearing the Mystery: Twenty Years of Image
Image Open House: January 29, 7-9 p.m.
The 2009 Florence Seminar: What a Thing is Man?
Application Deadlines for MFA Program, Shaw and Milton Center Fellowships

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Approaching God through Poetry: February 2-6, 2009
Abbey of the Arts

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ImageUpdate Moves to a New Schedule
Bailout Sale Extended until January 31!
Image Readings: Robert Clark
Register Now for the 2009 Glen Workshop!
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Image: Celebrating Twenty Years

This issue of ImageUpdate offers a sneak peek of the various ways we'll be celebrating our twentieth anniversary in 2009.

Image issue 60 recently mailed to subscribers. In honor of our twentieth anniversary, this bumper issue includes extra pages and special visual art features: new work from twelve of our favorite artists who have appeared in Image in the past, including Mary McCleary, Tim Hawkinson, Joel Sheesley, Alfonse Borysewicz, Lynn Aldrich, and others, and an essay by Ted Prescott on the variety of art represented in Image. There's also a quartet of short essays from four very different contemporary painters--Cathy Prescott, Tim Rollins, Alfonse Borysewicz, and Wayne Adams--reflecting on the state of their medium. A special symposium on art and the religious sense, "Fully Human," collects nine statements on the connection between art and a full expression of our humanity. Contributors range from theologian Stanley Hauerwas to poet Robert Cording, whose essay about the importance of "craving reality" you can read now online. The symposium also includes contributions from Ena Heller of the Museum of Biblical Art, Ron Austin on film, Valerie Sayers, Mako Fujimura, and more. There's also fiction by Ron Hansen, poems by Scott Cairns and Franz Wright, an interview with singer-songwriter Sam Phillips, an essay by Poetry magazine editor Christian Wiman, Robert Clark in review, and more.

Don't already subscribe to the print journal? While supplies of this new issue last, we'll include it free with new subscriptions when you subscribe online.

Just looking at Image, you might think it takes a whole army of people to keep the production going, and not our modest staff plus interns. But it all started with founders Gregory and Suzanne Wolfe--the real mojo behind Image--who threw themselves into an underdog project in their 20s, little knowing how it would shape their lives, much less the cultural landscape, for the next twenty years. In a twentieth anniversary web-exclusive interview, Greg and Suzanne reflect on their passion for "the relationship between culture and cultus, or things spiritual" that led them to create a literary and arts journal dedicated to the creative act itself--and to the community that has gathered around Image over the years. Through lean times and in it for the long-haul, the Wolfes remember what it was like in the beginning, and talk about what keeps the journal fresh, as well as Image's plans for the next twenty years. Read the interview online, and admire the faces behind Image in a gorgeous portrait by Image contributor Catherine Prescott. Says Prescott: "The sense of this interview is one of love and vision and hard work...and open eyes. Thank you both for staying with it. To me the paintings look like two people who would say those things."

Click here to go to the interview.

Bearing the Mystery: Twenty Years of Image, edited by Gregory Wolfe

To celebrate Image's twentieth year, we've put together a beautiful hard-cover anthology featuring some of our favorite writing and art from the pages of the journal over the past two decades. The book will be published this summer by Eerdman's Publishing Company. The anthology includes poems, stories, essays, and visual art going back to our very first issue, from writers such as Scott Cairns, Clyde Edgerton, Annie Dillard, Patricia Hampl, Ron Hansen, Mark Jarman, Marilyn Nelson, Ann Patchett, Richard Rodriguez, Kathleen Norris, Wim Wenders, and Franz Wright; and visual artists such as Laura Lasworth, Ted Prescott, Cathy Prescott, Barry Moser, Bruce Herman, Tim Lowly, Tim Rollins and KOS, Melissa Weinman, and Jerome Witkin. The book's cover image, Steve Hawley's Black Glass Still Life with Fish, Pear, and Skeleton, graced the cover of the very first issue of Image back in 1989. We're grateful to the dozens and dozens of writers and artists who granted us permission for this volume--and to Julie Mullins for thinking up the title. It was Sophie's choice picking just one book's worth of work from sixty issues of Image, but we feel pretty confident in saying that the result is the highest concentration of great writing and art engaged with faith available anywhere. Stay tuned to ImageUpdate for how to order the book this summer.

On September 13-20, 2009, Image will gather a small group of inquirers in Florence and Rome to explore the life and achievements of the sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, Michelangelo Buonarroti. In Image's twentieth anniversary year, we'll return to Italy to explore how Michelangelo's incarnational vision can inform our own efforts to continue bringing about cultural transformation in our time. In Michelangelo's works we see the dignity of humanity and its fall, the emergence of the individual and the dangers of individualism, and a fierce struggle to harmonize beauty with goodness and truth. Yet for all the conflict and tension in his work, Michelangelo left us with exquisite images of how God's grace can transform human experience. Our week together in Italy will begin with a couple days in Rome, where we will visit the Vatican and other sites associated with Michelangelo. The remainder of the week will be spent in Florence, where we will visit the great churches and museums featuring the artist and enjoy exquisite meals at restaurants in the city and the surrounding area.

If you're interested, visit the Florence Seminar page or contact Julie Mullins here to request a PDF or hard copy of the brochure.

Luci Shaw Fellowship: February 1

Seattle Pacific University MFA Program: February 15

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. Current faculty mentors include Robert Clark, Leslie Leyland Fields, Jeanine Hathaway, Bret Lott, Gina Ochsner, and Jeanne Murray Walker. Students work with faculty mentors during the year by exchanging manuscripts and critiques, and attend two intensive ten-day residencies each year, one in the summer alongside Image's Glen Workshop and one in March on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. The deadline to apply for summer 2009 admission is February 15. Click here for more information, including 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.

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