Religious Experience and the Contemporary American Short Story
Nov. 6, 8, 13, 15 | 10-11:30 a.m.
The American fiction writer Flannery O’Connor has her own distinct Southern Gothic style–often shocking and even grotesque–but she is not alone among contemporary writers who explore dimensions of human experience best called religious. Their stories may or may not directly use God’s language. In fact, most don’t, but these writers offer worlds in which religious experience–in all its diversity–is taken seriously, whether that involves devotion or doubt, the insidious seduction of self-righteousness, or a surprising invitation into some undeserved grace.
Donald Lanctot is a retired English teacher and befuddled elder.