Search results for: zarr
The Work Awaits
October 27, 2010
I join Good Letters with excitement, gratitude, and not a little bit of self-doubt. In the days when I was an unpublished aspirant—before I learned that becoming a better writer was far more important than nailing the perfect query letter—I heard from the experts that you should never advertise your lack of qualifications when contacting…
Read MoreIssue 93
Our summer issue on film, guest edited by Scott Teems and Gareth Higgins, features a symposium of sixteen filmmakers, actors, and critics reflecting on “the film that helps me live better”—including Scott Derrickson on Hiroshima Mon Amour, Tony Hale on The Hours, Claudia Puig on Boyhood, and more. The issue also features interviews on film, faith, and mystery with Mira Nair and Rodrigo Garcia, and a roundtable discussion with directors Debra Granik, David Lowery, and James Ponsoldt, and film critic Alissa Wilkinson on the kind of films we need at this moment. We’ve also reprinted a classic thought piece we first published in 2001 by Ron Austin, which is both a history of films that engage with faith and a call to a new generation of filmmakers. With memoir from Lee Isaac Chung on Hollywood’s American dream as seen through the eyes of Korean immigrants; Tyler McCabe on a childhood shaped by reality TV; and Sara Zarr on seeing her novel Story of a Girl adapted for the screen. Plus film-inspired poems from Scott Cairns and Natasha Oladokun.
Read MoreIssue 61
Melissa Pritchard’s fiction focuses on the life of a holy fool; Sara Zarr remembers the Jesus Movement; and Marilyn Nelson writes that “contemplative life has no frontiers.” With poems by Floyd Skloot, Jill Peláez Baumgaerter, Amy Newman, and Hannah Faith Notess; a conversation with Madeline DeFrees; an essay by pastor Debbie Blue; an in-depth look at the art of Jerzy Nowosielski; and more.
Read MoreLate Bloomers
May 10, 2012
My husband and I are going through a time of marital restlessness. Not with each other, but with our life together of twenty-two years––the midlife of our marriage, maybe. The last time we felt this way was at the ten-year point. The result of that restlessness, in combination with opportunity and, we felt, calling, was…
Read MoreHope: It’s Not Just for Kids
June 29, 2011
A recent article (opinion piece, really, though not presented as such) in the Wall Street Journal asked the question, “Is contemporary young adult fiction too dark?” Well, it didn’t so much ask it as answer it. In writer Meghan Cox Gurdon’s opinion: Yes. The essential complaint Gurdon has is with the dark subject matter of…
Read MoreIssue 93
$0.00Read more $10 Digital Issue Issue 93 | Summer 2017 Our summer issue on film, guest edited by Scott Teems and Gareth Higgins, features a symposium of sixteen filmmakers, actors, and critics reflecting on “the film that helps me live better”—including Scott Derrickson on Hiroshima Mon Amour, Tony Hale on The Hours, Claudia Puig on…
Read MoreIssue 61
$0.00Read more Issue 61 | Spring 2009 Melissa Pritchard’s fiction focuses on the life of a holy fool; Sara Zarr remembers the Jesus Movement; and Marilyn Nelson writes that “contemplative life has no frontiers.” With poems by Floyd Skloot, Jill Peláez Baumgaerter, Amy Newman, and Hannah Faith Notess; a conversation with Madeline DeFrees; an essay…
Read MoreWriting Rules for Life
September 27, 2018
For my forty-first birthday, I decided to write a personal rule of life. Turning forty hadn’t magically made me wise in the way that translates into action, and I didn’t wish to spend the next decade wading in the same bog of issues and habits and disordered affections that kept me from feeling present to…
Read MoreFor the Love of Money
June 28, 2018
My husband and I took a spring break trip to the central coast of California, and we included a stop at the Hearst Castle—William Randolph Hearst’s 90,000 square foot, 61-bathroom home on 127 acres at the top of a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Hearst was still expanding it when he died in 1951. It…
Read MoreWrestling with Sunday Mornings
July 31, 2015
This past Saturday afternoon I warned my husband, “I’m not going to church tomorrow.” In the morning when he went off early to help with music for the service, I went for a walk, made bacon and eggs, sat by an open window, and read every single page of the New York Times.
Read More