2007 Faculty

Tim Botts

Calligraphy Workshop

Timothy R. Botts began his study of calligraphy at Carnegie-Mellon University, and was also influenced by Japanese brush writing while teaching conversational English in Tokyo for three years. For the past 34 years he has designed books for Tyndale House Publishers, where he is a senior art director. He teaches part time through the College of DuPage, as well as with calligraphy guilds internationally. Books of his work include Doorposts, Botts Illustrated Bible, and Portraits of the Word. He is also actively working with Masterpiece Ministries, an outreach to high school students in the arts.

Scott Cairns

Poetry Workshop

Scott Cairns’s most recent collection of poetry is Compass of Affection. Previous collections include Philokalia, Recovered Body, The Theology of Doubt, The Translation of Babel, and Figures for the Ghost. He is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Missouri. His work appears in The Paris Review, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Spiritus, and Prairie Schooner, and in the anthologies The Best American Spiritual Writing (2000, 2001, 2004, 2005, and 2006), and Upholding Mystery. In 2007, his spiritual memoir, Short Trip to the Edge, was published by Harper San Francisco, and his collection of new translations and adaptations, Love’s Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life, was published by Paraclete Press.

Moira Crone

Fiction Workshop

Moira Crone is the author of four books of fiction: What Gets Into Us, Dream State, A Period of Confinement, and Winnebago Mysteries. Her stories have been published in The New Yorker, Image, Triquarterly, Mademoiselle, Boston Sunday Globe Magazine, North American Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review, and Gettysburg Review; among others. She has been included in the anthologies New Stories by Southern Women, Best from the Ohio Review, 25th Anniversary Anthology, Wide Awake in the Pelican State, and American Made. She was Image Journal's Artist of the Month in August, 2006. Her stories have often been selected among the "Year's Best" in New Stories From The South, (Algonquin Books). She has received grants from the NEA, the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College and the ATLAS program for Louisiana Artists. Winner of the, and the Faulkner/Wisdom Award for Novella, she teaches fiction writing in the MFA program at Louisiana State University and served as the director of that program for many years.

George Dardess

Pastor

George Dardess, an ordained Deacon of the Roman Catholic Church, serves the parish of the Blessed Sacrament in Rochester, New York, and is a consultant on Interfaith and Ecumenical Affairs for the Diocese of Rochester. He is currently Chair of Rochester’s Commission on Muslim Christian Relations. With a PhD in English Literature and a Masters in Theology, George gives talks, retreats, and workshops around the U.S. on Muslim-Christian dialogue and has recently published two books on the subject: Meeting Islam: A Guide for Christians (Paraclete Press) and Do We Worship the Same God? The Qur’an and the Bible Compared (St Anthony Messenger Press). He and his wife Peggy Rosenthal live in Rochester. They have one son and two grandchildren.

Father David Denny

Guest Speaker

A native of Indiana, Fr. Dave moved to Arizona in 1969. In the summer of 1970 he was an exchange student in Afghanistan, which kindled a lifelong interest in the Middle East, especially the Abrahamic spiritual traditions. In 1975 he entered the Spiritual Life Institute, a contemplative monastic community rooted in the Carmelite tradition. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1980. From 1985 to 2004 he was co-editor of Desert Call, the Institute's quarterly magazine. Since 1993 he has been a visiting professor at Colorado College, where he teaches the history of Christian mysticism. In 2005 Fr. Dave left the Spiritual Life Institute and co-founded The Desert Foundation, an informal circle of friends who share a passion for the desert, the Abrahamic faiths, and the spiritualities of the American Southwest. He served as chaplain at the Glen Workshop from 2003-2005, and in 2005 taught The Spiritual Quest in Literature at Colorado College and led seminars on art and faith with Seattle Pacific University’s MFA summer residency. In 2006 Fr. Dave led the Glen Workshop Seminar, Grief, Belief, Rage and Surrender.

Ginger Geyer

Mosaic Workshop

Austin artist Ginger Geyer’s work offers a playful and probing mix of theology, painting, porcelain and story. She has a MFA degree from SMU, and a Masters of Pastoral Ministry from the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, where she is on the associate faculty. As Arts Consultant for Laity Lodge, she curates exhibitions and schedules artists for retreats and residencies. She was formerly Deputy Director for Planning at the Dallas Museum of Art. Her sculpture has been featured in Image, The Christian Century, The Wittenburg Door, the CIVA Silver anniversary book, the Dallas Morning News, and the Austin American Statesman, in addition to numerous exhibitions and speaking engagements at regional and national conferences on art and faith. See www.gingergeyer.com.

Rodger Kamenetz

Seminar: Peoples of the Book

Rodger Kamenetz is the author of nine books of poetry and non-fiction. His latest book of poetry is The Lowercase Jew (Northwestern, 2003). His non-fiction includes the international best seller The Jew in the Lotus (Harper, 1994), an account of Jewish-Buddhist dialogue, and Stalking Elijah (Harper) which won the National Jewish Book Award. He has taught poetry, non-fiction and religious studies at LSU since 1981 and is the founding director of the Jewish Studies program there. Harper will publish his latest book, The History of Last Night's Dream, in fall 2007.

Ann McCutchan

Spiritual Writing Workshop

Ann McCutchan is the author of Marcel Moyse: Voice of the Flute (Amadeus Press, 1994), The Muse That Sings: Composers Speak About the Creative Process (Oxford University Press, 1999), and a wide range of published work in magazines, literary journals and other media, including several music libretti. Current projects include Soundings, a collection of personal essays on music, and Water Music, a memoir of life and travels in the South. Ann has been awarded grants, fellowships and residencies from the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Mid-America Arts Alliance, the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the National Park Service, the Jentel Foundation, and the Wyoming Arts Council. In 1999 she held the Ward Lectureship in Religious Imagination at Lancaster Theological Seminary. She has taught writing at the University of Texas, Cornell University and the University of Wyoming, and in 2005 joined the creative writing faculty at the University of North Texas, where she serves as Prose Editor for the American Literary Review.

Barry Moser

Drawing from Life and the Masters

Barry Moser's work can be found in numerous collections and libraries around the world, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the Vatican Library, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. His engraved illustrations of the King James Bible, Moby-Dick, The Divine Comedy, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland have received international acclaim.

Jamal Rahman

Guest Speaker

Jamal Rahman is a Muslim Sufi. His passion lies in interfaith community building. He remains rooted in his Islamic tradition but cultivates a "spaciousness" by being open to the beauty and wisdom of other faiths. Through the process of an authentic and appreciative understanding of other paths, Jamal feels that he is becoming a better Muslim. This spaciousness is not about conversion but about completion.

Jamal has an abiding faith in the power of heart to heart connections to encompass differences and dissolve prejudices. He enjoys programs that celebrate life and unity through poetry, laughter and food. Jamal Rahman is Muslim Sufi co-minister at Interfaith Community Church. Director of Sacred Psychology School, and adjunct faculty at Seattle University. Jamal travels often, co-facilitating workshops and retreats locally, nationally, and internationally. He is the author of a book titled: The Fragrance of Faith: The Enlightened Heart of Islam. He is also co-author of a soon to be published book (Sept 2007) called What Really Matters along with a Rabbi and a Pastor, he co-hosts an Interfaith Talk Radio show, www.interfaithtalkradio.com, on KKNW 1150AM.

Mark St. Germain

Playwriting and Screenwriting Workshop

Mark has written the plays Camping With Henry and Tom (Outer Critics Circle and Lucille Lortel Awards), Out of Gas On Lover's Leap, Forgiving Typhoid Mary (Time Magazine’s “Year’s Ten Best”), Ears on a Beatle and The God Committee. With Randy Courts, he has written the musicals The Gifts of the Magi, Johnny Pye and the Foolkiller, winner of an AT&T “New Plays For The Nineties Award”, Jack's Holiday and The Book of the Dun Cow, adapted by Walter Wangerin Jr.’s novel. They most recently completed a new adaptation of Dr. Dolittle for Theatreworks, USA. Mark’s musical, Stand by Your Man, The Tammy Wynette Story was created for Nashville’s Ryman Theater and then toured nationally. His plays and musicals are published by Samuel French and the Dramatists Play Service. Mark co-wrote the screenplay for Carroll Ballard’s recently acclaimed film, Duma. Television credits include Writer and Creative Consultant for The Cosby Show. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists, where he was given the Callaway Award and was a recipient of the “New Voices In American Theatre” award at the William Inge Festival. Mark is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Writer’s Guild East.

Daniel Tobin

Poetry Workshop

Daniel Tobin is the author of four books of poems, Where the World is Made, co-winner of the 1998 Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize (University Press of New England, 1999), Double Life (Louisiana State University Press, 2004), The Narrows (Four Way Books, 2005—finalist for the Foreword Book Award in Poetry), and Second Things (forthcoming from Four Way Books, 2008), as well as a book of criticism, Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney, and numerous essays on poetry. He has edited The Book of Irish American Poetry from the 18th Century to the Present (Notre Dame University Press 2007), Light in the Hand: The Selected Poems of Lola Ridge (Quale Press 2007) and Poet’s Work, Poet’s Play: Essays on the Practice and the Art (forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press, 2008). Among his awards are the "The Discovery / The Nation Award," The Robert Penn Warren Award, the Greensboro Review Prize, a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Robert Frost Fellowship from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Widely published in journals, his work has been anthologized in The Bread Loaf Anthology of New American Poets, The Norton Introduction to Poetry, Hammer and Blaze, among other collections, and has been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. He was Image journal’s Artist of the Month for June 2005. Daniel Tobin is presently Chair of the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston.

Over the Rhine

Songwriting Workshop

As Over the Rhine, Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist have made a full-time living as songwriters and recording artists for well over a decade, releasing a fist-full of lush, literate, and critically acclaimed CDs. All Music Guide calls their latest, Drunkard's Prayer, "tender, poetic, gracious, deeply moving – where folk, rock and American roots music caress and kiss." M2 Magazine in New Zealand wrote, "Over the Rhine's songs are often stunningly simple, but always fearless." As young musicians, Linford and Karin resisted the urge to relocate to Los Angeles or Nashville or New York, and remained rooted in Ohio where they had spent much of their childhoods. Their unique approach to their music and career has won them a devoted and ever-growing audience. Their next full-length CD called, The Trumpet Child, is due to be released in 2007.

Pierce Pettis

Musician-in-Residence

Hailed as one of America's most thoughtful and moving singer-songwriters, Pierce Pettis is known for his exquisitely wrought lyrics and virtuosic guitar-playing. As William Michael Smith has written in Rockzilla World: "Across the entire range of his styles, Pettis constantly reinforces the sensation that he is a thoughtful, sensitive, serious poet, a man who looks deep and ponders long." Pettis will give a concert and play in the evening worship services. Visit www.piercepettis.com for more.

Peggy Rosenthal

Liturgist

Peggy Rosenthal is director of Poetry Retreats and writes about poetry and spirituality. Her books include the historical survey The Poets’ Jesus and the reflection guides Praying the Gospels through Poetry: Lent to Easter and Praying through Poetry: Hope for Violent Times. She co-edited the anthology Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in World Poetry and compiled the annotated collections Imagine a World: Poetry for Peacemakers and Making Peace, a selection of Denise Levertov’s poems. Her essays have appeared in Image, America, The Christian Century and Books & Culture. She has a PhD in literature and lives with her husband George Dardess in Rochester, New York.