Lori Erickson and Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez: The Art, Craft and Call to be a Spiritual Writer

In this session, two of Iowa’s leading spiritual writers discuss their work. Spiritual writing is a growing subgenre in fiction as well as in memoir, poetry, meditations, and self-help. It may or may not be aligned with an organized religion, faith, belief system, or philosophy, yet all spiritual writing seeks to discover human truths and also typically struggles with how we live and develop in the midst of something larger than ourselves. This field of writing is as ancient as the earliest sacred texts and as ongoing as the poetry of Mary Carr, the theology of Howard Thurman, the novels of Marilynne Robinson, and the wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh. Jennifer Ohman-Rodgriguez and Lori Erickson discuss their own spiritual explorations as a basis for their writing and the value of this type of writing for all seekers.