>If you haven’t heard about the Festival of Faith and Writing (see my previous post), it is a conference hosted by Calvin College in Michigan where authors, readers, writers, librarians, publishers, and more gather in community for three days to celebrate the art of language. It is a biennial conference, so the last time I attended was two years ago. And you would think, with a two-year head-start, that I would have been all read up on the authors and their books speaking this year. Well…you know how that goes. But as I listened to the lectures of Tim Stafford, the senior writer of Christianity Today, Wally Lamb, novelist of the bestseller She’s Come Undone, and Lisa Samson, author of over twenty Christian Fiction novels, I cannot help but put them on my never-ending list of things to read.

Some fun things that have happened so far:

First, remember what I said about rubbing elbows with literary luminaries? Well, it happened. My sister and I walked into the first session with an older couple twenty minutes early, who joked with us about the crazy 80s-styled carpet of the meeting hall. Later in the session, the speaker referred to the man by his name: Eugene Peterson. The man who translated The Message, pastoring and authoring other books since. We had no idea.

This afternoon, I heard from Kate DiCamillo, the children’s author who has penned The Tale of Desperaux, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, and The Magician’s Elephant. Kate explained that she wound up writing children’s books because she worked at a book warehouse on the 3rd floor where they packed and shipped the Children’s Books (and she spent a large part of her time there reading on the job!).