Word Made Flesh: Writing for Social Change
Instructors
Liberty Ferda, freelance writer and writing instructor, earned an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh in 2010. In addition to contributing to several regional magazines and newspapers, she writes for the Open Hand Ministries and Lost Daughters adoption advocacy blogs. Recent publications include essays in the anthologies Other Tongues: Mixed Race Women Speak Out (Inanna Publications) and The Beiging of America (2Leaf Press). She teaches writing and tutors at the University of Pittsburgh, and her writing placed as a finalist for both the 2017 Disquiet International Literary Program in poetry and the 2017 Penelope Niven Award in Creative Nonfiction.
Tony Norman is an award-winning columnist and associate editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He is the PG's book review editor and an adjunct journalism professor at Chatham University. Tony began his career in journalism at Calvin College where he was a "much misunderstood" political cartoonist and opinion writer for the college newspaper. Along the way, he has won every local, regional, and statewide journalism award along with a prestigious Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship at the University of Michigan in 2005-2006. His first anthology of columns, The Wretched, Venal Life of Rev. Ike and Other Irksome Provocations, will be published in early 2018.
Date
March 16, 7:00-9:00 p.m.-March 17, 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m., 2018
Overview
Racial justice, economic equality, empathy amid political polarization . . . how might writing help us express or achieve our hopes in these areas for ourselves and our communities? In the Christian tradition, words matter – they create, they communicate, they reflect, they incarnate. We will consider examples of writers who have harnessed the power of words to illuminate an untold story, inhabit a different perspective, call readers to action, or imagine a fully redeemed world. We will talk about how these ideas might be enacted through church ministry. Readings may include web writings of various ministries and work by Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, bell hooks, Natasha Trethewey, and/or Cornelius Eady. Join two experienced writers and writing instructors for a workshop to explore how to use your words to make a difference in the world around you through blogs, fiction, essays, and other ways of telling a story. Co-sponsored with the Center for Writing and Learning Support, PTS.
You may be interested in another writing class that we are offering, Writing the Spiritual Life, in May 2018.
Registration / CEUs / Directions
Registration: $65
CEUs: 0.5
Directions: Get directions to the Seminary. Free parking is available on the Seminary campus behind the chapel and library.
Notice of Photography and Filming: When you enter a Pittsburgh Theological Seminary event or program, you enter an area where photography, audio, and video recording may occur.
Questions
Call 412-924-1345 or e-mail .