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Bibliophiles Unanimous!: A Conversation With Susan Griffin 6/26/22
June 26, 2022 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
A Conversation With Susan Griffin
On Sunday, June 26th, Susan Griffin was our Special Guest. She talked about the book she is currently writing, a biography of Phoebe Hearst. She read some poems about her sister.
She read from her newest book, Out of Silence, Sound. Out of Nothing, Something.: A Writer’s Guide and talked about the writing process. This book will be available January 17, 2023. You can pre-order it now from Amazon:
From the back cover of the book:
“In an elegant but contemporary voice, award-winning author Susan Griffin breaks down the creative process step-by-step, guiding the reader through a practical course in how to begin and end a work of literature, whether fiction or nonfiction, poetry, or prose.
The distinguished author of more than twenty-two books…Susan Griffin distills daily wisdom garnered from more than five decades teaching creative writing and editing manuscripts, as well as from her own writing. This collection of brief but ultimately pithy chapters designed to help beginning writers get started also guides experienced writers through blocks and difficulties of all kinds.
Organized according to a practical timeline, Out of Silence, Sound. Out of Nothing, Something. elucidates the process of writing from beginning to end, presenting an approach that is similar to the practice of meditation as it encourages and enlarges the mind’s intrinsic capacity for creativity. An autobiographical account, a sometimes humorous, at times moving essay called “How I Learned to Write” is threaded throughout the book.”
I read Susan Griffin’s book Woman and Nature when it came out in 1978. I was 27 years old. Although my women friends were all feminists, this book went deeper and taught me more about the history of how men had thought about and talked about women than anything I had encountered up to that time. In her book she explored the relationship between the oppression of women and the destruction of the natural world. The end of the book is a vision and a prophecy of a transformation in the way we live in and love the world and each other.
Woman and Nature changed the way I see and understand the world. Over the past more than forty years, I have returned again and again to her luminous prose in the hope of becoming a wiser and more loving person. Another personal favorite of mind is The Eros of Everyday Life.
Poet, playwright, philosopher, essayist, teacher–Susan Griffin’s books include:
Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (1978)
A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War (1993)
The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society (1995)
Bending Home: Selected New Poems, 1967-1998 (1998)
What Her Body Thought: A Journey Into the Shadows (1999)
The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues (2001)
Wrestling With the Angel of Democracy: On Being an American Citizen (2008)
Everyone who came to the Zoom gathering enjoyed Susan’s warmth and wisdom.
peace, love & happiness
Johnny