Christa Pierce, BA ’13
Thursday, April 30th
3–3:50 p.m.

Did You Know How Much I Love You? Children’s Book Publishing with Christa Pierce

SPU Alumna Christa Pierce will be telling the story of how she signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins during her senior finals at SPU, and sharing what industry knowledge she has learned since. Come join the conversation if you love art, writing, or kid’s books, and are interested in learning more about publishing, agents, and editors.

Doug Strong, Theology
Thursday, May 7th
3–3:50 p.m.

Rediscovering our Evangelical Hertiage: A Tradition and Trajectory of Integrating Piety and Justice

In the book by this name published forty years ago, Donald Dayton “showed that many evangelical Christians in the 19th century didn’t distinguish between a private faith focused exclusively on personal salvation and radical concern for the poor and oppressed…It wasn’t an evangelical faith concerned only about heaven and the life hereafter but also about bringing the kingdom of God into this world.” [Quoted from the “Foreword” by Jim Wallis.] Doug Strong, who had the honor of writing a new introduction and conclusion for the republication of this classic text, will be presenting second edition of this book.

Chris Hoke, MFA ’13
Thursday, May 14th
12–12:50 p.m.

Monasticism in Lockdown America: Re-Purposing Prison Cells for Monastic Renewal

As a chaplain in a Washington State county jail for the past ten years, much of Chris’s time is spent with men whose lives are spent in an environment with many of the major ingredients for a monastery: all men, wearing the same clothes, set apart from temptations and their daily hustle of addictions and distractions, deeply examining their lives, while spending most of their days in small bare rooms called cells. At the same time, Chris has been exploring monastic spiritual formation in his own life: community, humility, repentance, quiet, prayer, study and deeper transformation by mercy. He has explored both in practice with inmates, and in writing (in Image Journal’s “Good Letters” blog), how we can appropriate monastic practices inside the hard shell of the America’s dismal penal system. He is considering developing this into my second book.

Dyana Herron, Image Milton Fellow
Thursday, May 21th
12–12:50 p.m.

Laughing in the Dark: Using Humor to Write About (Seriously) Tough Topics

Each year SPU and Image Journal award a one-year writing and teaching fellowship to a postgraduate writer working to complete his or her first full-length fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry manuscript. During this Creative Conversations talk, current Milton Fellow Dyana Herron will discuss her project—which explores the experience of having a family member sentenced to federal prison—while focusing on both the advantages and potential pitfalls of using humor to approach painful or delicate material.