a lot about themselves and their dreams—which has a lot to do with listening for God’s voice and follow- ing where you have been called. The whole concept of grace is so impor- tant to me. Especially writing for children, no matter what happens in the story you always end with hope, which to me is another form of grace.
Jill Alexander Essbaum
Lutheran connection: member, First English Lutheran Church, Aus- tin, Texas. Genre: Poetry. Titles: Heaven (A Middlebury College/ Bread Loaf Book, 2000), Harlot (No Tell Books, 2007), Devasta- tion (Cooper Dillon
Books, 2009). Bio: “Jill Alexander Essbaum is devout and edgy and represents Lutheranism in a different light,” said Paul Shepherd, director of the Lutheran Writers Project, which is sponsoring her 2011 book tour to ELCA colleges and churches in nine states. She teaches in the low-residence master of fine arts program at the Palm Desert Campus of the University of Cali- fornia, Riverside. She also mows lawns.
I am a poet and I am a Christian and I am a Lutheran. The older I get, the more Lutheran I discover that I am. A lot of my thought is infused with basic Lutheran theology, which is grace above all things, and reason. I also feel a kinship with [Martin]
Luther, though lately when I tell this to people they back away! Luther knew what it meant to be chased by the devil. I know what it is like to be haunted by things that only prayer and writing and really railing can solve. Death, sex and religion are
things I can’t let go, that haunt me. I write about religion a lot and about sex and I’ve found that—and usually secular people fight me on this— church folk are way more comfort- able talking about sex than the secu- lar folk are talking about Jesus.
Todd Boss
Lutheran connection: Raised at First Lutheran Church in Eau Claire, Wis.; gradu- ate of St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn.; currently church shopping. Genre: Poetry. Title: Yellow Rocket (W.W. Norton, 2010). Bio: The self-
appointed poet laureate of Nina’s Cafe in St. Paul, Minn., Boss is also the co-founder of
motionpoems.com, a film project that turns poems into ani- mated shorts.
All my people are Lutheran. I have been very heavily influenced by the creeds, the music, the people and everything I heard ... whether I want to be or not. I’ll always be paddling with that undercurrent.
I think of my poems as prayers. A lot of things are happening in a good poem that reaches you, touches you. I remember so often as a kid sitting in church and being moved. Feeling it under your skin, in the back of your neck, when your heart skips or quick- ens or something itches in the bottom of your feet, I know I’ve been moved. I’ve been touched. That is what I try to do in poems. To a lot of writers, God is kind of the third rail—you don’t say God! But I like to think of God as a cre- ative character, as an artist. A lot of poems in Yellowrocket treat God as
an artist and raise questions about his creator nature. At Nina’s Café, God is not taboo but part of the dialogue.
Emily Rapp
Lutheran connections: Pastor’s daughter; graduate of St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn.; former youth intern at the Lutheran World Federation; former board mem- ber, ELCA Division for Global Mission. Genres: Memoir and fiction.
Titles: Poster Child: A Memoir (Blooms- bury, 2007). Bio: Rapp teaches at the Santa Fe [N.M] University of Art and Design. She is writing a memoir about her son Roan, recently diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease.
My book about my son is a love
story. Like all great love stories, it is ultimately a story of loss. That has become clear to me this year, but I was always very aware that bad things happened to people, that things didn’t turn out the way you expected. This has made me look again in more wrenching ways. There is no right path, no right way to be or think or act, only what you are given and how you manage it. Writing about suffering is not ther-
apeutic, it’s cathartic. The end goal of therapy is emotional regulation or happiness, equilibrium. The goal of catharsis is not the same. Art comes from catharsis, which means to strip away or burn out. Art wrenched out of something that has happened to you is painful, like a crucible. ... A person writing a memoir is like a per- son on fire, not a person sitting in a chair talking about their feelings. M
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