Pray with Your Whole Life:

On Howard Thurman and Thomas Merton

with Barbara Taylor & Sophfronia Scott

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Festival favorite Barbara Brown Taylor joins author Sophfronia Scott and Pastor Beth Waltemath of North Decatur Presbyterian Church to discuss Howard Thurman, Thomas Merton, and prayer-centered life. This complex conversation will bring together ideas from Barbara Brown Taylor’s work in Anchored in the Current: Discovering Howard Thurman as Educator, Activist, Guide, and Prophet, and Sophfronia Scott’s upcoming book The Seekers and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton.

About the Authors:

Barbara Brown Taylor is a best-selling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest. Her first memoir, Leaving Church, won an Author of the Year award from the Georgia Writers Association in 2006. Her next two books, An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark, earned places on the New York Times bestseller list. She has served on the faculties of Piedmont College, Columbia Theological Seminary, Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, and the Certificate in Theological Studies program at Arrendale State Prison for Women in Alto, Georgia. In 2014 TIME included her on its annual list of Most Influential People; in 2015 she was named Georgia Woman of the Year; in 2016 she received the President’s Medal at the Chautauqua Institution in New York. Her fourteenth book, Holy Envy, was released in March 2019.

Sophfronia Scott grew up in Lorain, Ohio, a hometown she shares with author Toni Morrison. She holds a BA in English from Harvard and an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. When her first novel, All I Need to Get By, was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2004 Sophfronia was nominated for best new author at the African American Literary Awards and hailed by Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as “potentially one of the best writers of her generation.” Sophfronia teaches at Regis University’s Mile High MFA and Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction. She has delivered craft talks and held workshops at the Yale Writers’ Workshop, Meacham Writers’ Workshop, and the Hobart Festival of Women Writers. She lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and her latest novel is Unforgivable Love.

About the Interviewer:

Beth Waltemath serves as pastor at North Decatur Presbyterian Church alongside David Lewicki. Beth graduated as an Echols Scholar and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Virginia (BA ’99, English) before receiving a fellowship to teach in England. In 2000, she moved to New York City and enjoyed working for Random House and Hearst Magazines before becoming a freelance writer and attending seminary. She received her MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in New York City (’04). Walteman believes that when we tend to the needs of others, we discover and often satisfy our deepest longings. She belongs to the church because it is a place where this can happen. Beth enjoys parenting her three children, James, Margaret, and William, but also enjoys writing for literary websites, lifestyle magazines, and church curriculum.

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Holy Envy by Barbara Brown Taylor and The Seeker and the Monk by Sophfronia Scott available through local, indie bookseller FoxTale Book Shoppe