When evangelical Christians say they talk to God, what do they mean? Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann wanted to find out, so she spent two years as a participant observer in a Charismatic church, talking to the congregation and even praying herself. She says prayer involves cultivating the imagination. Luhrmann also describes her cross-cultural study of schizophrenics who hear voices.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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The celebrated poet Edward Hirsch says the history of poetry is the history of poetic forms. And to prove it he wrote a 700-page compendium about all things poetry.
AL Kennedy is the author of “On Bullfighting.” She tells Steve Paulson what happens in the ring and tries to explain bullfighting’s primal power and beauty.
Andre Brink is a white South African novelist whose anti-apartheid books inspired Nelson Mandela and became a lightning rod for criticism from the ruling regime.
Anne Fadiman talks about the delight she and her brother took as children with collecting (and killing) butterflies.
Kevin Powers served as a machine gunner in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. His novel “The Yellow Birds” was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Aaron was born female and lived the first 29 years of his life as a girl named Sarah. He then went through the hormone and surgical therapies to become male and lives now as a gay man.
Why does this teenager believe that poetry is the literary art most relevant to our lives today?
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