Critically acclaimed authors converge on Lipscomb campus for seven events between March and June
Janel Shoun |
If you are a writer or enjoy literature, Lipscomb’s campus is the place to be this spring. Lipscomb University will be hosting many critically acclaimed authors at seven free events between March and June. Events range from religious to literary to business-oriented.
Check out the details on who is coming to campus below:
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Events Three Stories of Youth Ministry Sustainable Business Conference
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Authors
Three Stories of Youth Ministry
March 1, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.
Lipscomb University campus
Register Here, Cost: $79
The power of storytelling -- featuring an up-and-coming Southern voice in religious literature and a Nashville communications expert who has worked with IBM, Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart -- will be the focus of the Lipscomb University College of Bible and Ministry’s youth ministers’ conference this year.
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Michael Novelli
Novelli, a 13-year church youth pastor, is the author of Shaped by the Story. He is the founder of Echo, an organization that advances the art of “storying,” a dialogical approach to Bible learning.
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Rachel Held Evans
Evans is a Dayton, Tennessee, native and author of Evolving in Monkeytown, a memoir using her own spiritual journey from certainty, through doubt, to faith, as an illustration within the ongoing dialogue about postmodernism and the church.
Dayton is famous for hosting the Scopes monkey trial, and with a father who taught at Christian Bryan College, Evans was greatly shaped in childhood by fundamentalist religious experiences.
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About David Hutchens
Hutchens is the Nashville-based author of A Slice of Trust and an expert in helping organizations like Coca-Cola, Kroger and Wal-Mart define their organization’s story and how it shapes their culture.
Women. Leadership. Faith. Conference
March 2, 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Ezell Center, Swang Chapel
Register here, Cost: $95
At “Women. Leadership. Faith.” prominent women leaders in business, education, government, ministry, nonprofit management and the arts will participate in interactive dialog on topics such as managing self while leading others, facilitating wellness in the workplace and in the home, developing faith-informed leadership strategies and incorporating authentic living into decision-making processes.
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Nelson, an award-winning author, journalist and political commentator, is a former House of Representatives committee counsel and a former defense industry lobbyist with the nationally ranked law firm of Holland & Knight LLP.
Nelson is the founder and current chairman of the board of iask Inc., an organization dedicated to the relational, emotional, spiritual, career and health of professional black women. Nelson’s new book, “Black Women Redefined” examines the inner lives and unique challenges of accomplished black women in this modern age of the nation’s first African-American First Lady, Michelle Obama.
March 5, 7 p.m.
March 6, 9:30-4:30 p.m.
Lipscomb University campus
Register here, Free admission
Building on the growing national movement that emphasizes personal spiritual development through spiritual disciplines and spiritual mentorships, the Institute for Christian Spirituality provides public seminars aimed at deepening Christian spirituality in everyday life. Nurture, an annual conference on spiritual formation, features two keynote addresses, a contemplative prayer service, workshop sessions on spirituality and a community luncheon.
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Glandion Carney
Carney, a faculty member with Nashville’s Academy of Spiritual Formation at the Upper Room, provides leadership training and counseling in areas of pastoral care, prayer and spiritual formation at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Birmingham, Ala. He was the founding pastor of CentrePointe Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., for 10 years and has also worked for a number of parachurch organizations and ministries such as World Vision, Intervarsity, Youth for Christ and Wycliffe Bible Translators. Carney has authored or co-authored six books including “Longing for God: Prayer and the Rhythms of Life,” “Trusting God Again: Regaining Hope After Disappointment or Loss,” and “A Beginner's Guide to Spiritual Formation.”
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Gary W. Moon
Moon is the executive director of the Renovaré International Institute for Christian Spiritual Formation and as editor-in-chief of Conversations Journal. He has written many books, his most recent being Apprenticeship with Jesus (2009). He also serves as the executive director of the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture and the Dallas Willard Center for Christian Spiritual Formation at Westmont College.
March 9, “Date Night with John Van Epp”
7 p.m., Hillsboro Church of Christ, Free admission
March 10, PICK and LINKS Training
All day, Lipscomb University campus, $250 or $400
Register at john.conger [at] lipscomb.edu
The Lipscomb Conference on Family Wellness features a free talk for singles and couples by marriage expert John Van Epp at Hillsboro Church of Christ and a full day of training in two of Van Epp’s nationally recognized programs: the PICK a Partner program (Premarital Interpersonal Choices & Knowledge) and the Marriage LINKS program. Registation is available for one program for $250 or both for $400.
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Van Epp has conducted numerous seminars and workshops over the past twenty years on topics related to marriage, family, recovery, singlehood, emotional make-up, relationships and divorce. His popular PICK curriculum is being taught in 10 countries and over 45 states by hundreds of churches, singles organizations, educational settings and agencies. His new book, "How To Avoid Falling in Love with A Jerk," was published by McGraw-Hill. He was recently chosen as one of AOL’s Love & Sex Coaches.
Van Epp and his innovative Relationship Attachment Model, book and relationship courses were awarded the Smart Marriage Impact Award (2008) and have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, Psychology Today, O magazine and Cosmopolitan. He has appeared on the CBS Early Show, the O’Reilly Factor, Fox News and Focus on the Family.
March 27, 8:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m.
March 28, 7:30 a.m.-2 p.m.
Lipscomb University campus
Register here, Cost: $195 (before Feb. 29), $250
Formerly the Green Business Summit, the 2012 Sustainable Business Summit is the fifth anniversary summit and features the theme “Moving from Green to Sustainable.”
In recent years, we’ve seen the effects of “green washing” where sustainable efforts get labeled as a fad or just a trendy business move. But sustainable business models, practices and opportunities are meant to help companies and communities become more sustainable in the way they function both now and in the future, as well as stay competitive, improve profitability, grow market valuation and create jobs.
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Janine Benyus
Benyus is a natural sciences writer, innovation consultant, and author of six books, including her latest, "Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature." She founded the Biomimicry Institute, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to advocate biomimicry through the transfer of ideas, designs and strategies from biology to sustainable human systems design. In “Biomimicry,” she names an emerging discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature's designs.
Benyus won the 2009 Champion of the Earth award in Science & Innovation from the United Nations Environmental Programme, the Rachel Carson Environmental Ethics Award and has been honored as one of Time Magazine's International's Heroes of the Environment.
March 29-31
Lipscomb University campus
Free admission to designated events outlined below
The Southern Literary Festival was established 75 years ago as a way to allow undergraduate writers have access to the leading Southern writers of the day. The 2012 festival will capture the spirit of the modern, urban South, with a focus on the intersection between literature, images and music, with guest speakers from the music industry, a graphic novelist, the electronic publishing industry and various authors.
The festival will feature various opportunities for the public to hear these critically acclaimed authors and composers in free master classes and workshops.
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Mark Richard
Landiss Lecture
Thursday, March 29, 7:30 p.m.
The Ezell Center, Swang Chapel
Panel discussion on the Art of Storytelling
Saturday, March 31, 10:30 a.m.
The Ezell Center, room 301
Richard, critically acclaimed author of “House of Prayer No. 2,” is also the author of two award-winning short story collections, “The Ice at the Bottom of the World” and “Charity,” and a bestselling novel “Fishboy.” A native of Louisiana, Richard has served as a visiting writer-in-residence at the University of California Irvine, University of Mississippi, Arizona State University, the University of the South, Sewanee and The Writer's Voice in New York. He has also been a correspondent for the BBC.
“House of Prayer No.2,” an autobiography about his struggle to overcome a birth defect and find his place in the world, was listed on many critics’ lists of the best nonfiction books of 2011.
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Tina Howe
Master class
Saturday, Mar 31, 9 a.m.
Shamblin Theatre
Talk-Back after performance of Pride's Crossing
Friday, March 30, 9:30 p.m.
Shamblin Theatre
A two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Howe has been a visiting professor at Hunter College since 1990 and is playwright-in-residence of the new Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA in Playwriting. Among her many awards are an Obie for distinguished playwriting, a Tony nomination for best play, an Outer Circle Critics Award, a Rockefeller Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, two honorary degrees and the William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theatre.
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Mark Jarman
Poetry reading and Q&A
Friday, March 30, 9:30 a.m.
The Ezell Center, Swang Chapel
Winner of the Poet’s Prize, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Jarman is author of 14 collections of poems and essays including “The Black Riviera,” “Questions for Ecclesiastes,” “Epistles” and, most recently, has published a collection of selected poems in “Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems.” He is the Centennial Professor in English and director of the creative writing program at Vanderbilt University.
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Eric Powell
Ka-Pow! Comics and Cartoons in Contemporary Culture
Opening Reception: Monday, March 26, 6 p.m.
John C. Hutcheson Gallery, the Hughes Center
Master Class with Eric Powell
Friday, March 30, 3 p.m.
The Ezell Center, Swang Chapel
Panel discussion on the Art of Storytelling
Saturday, March 31, 10:30 a.m.
The Ezell Center, room 301
Five-time Eisner Award winner Powell is an innovator in comics. He has worked on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Star Wars Tales,” “The Avengers,” “MAD Magazine” and “Action Comics” as well as other leading comics titles. He is currently working with acclaimed director David Fincher (“Fight Club”) on developing a film adaptation of his graphic novel “The Goon.”
June 7-9
Lipscomb University campus
Free admission to designated events outlined below
The mission of the Christian Scholars’ Conference (CSC) is to nurture an intellectual Christian community that stimulates networks of scholarly dialogue and collaboration. The CSC theme in 2012 will be “Reconciliation: At the Intersection of Scholarship and Practice” and will feature several free opportunities for the public to hear authors with personal life experiences illustrating Christian reconciliation.
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Dr. Abraham Verghese
Thursday, June 7, 11 a.m.
Collins Alumni Auditorium
Born of Indian parents who were teachers in Ethiopia, Verghese grew up near Addis Ababa and began his medical training there. The deep relationships he formed and the suffering he witnessed during his early medical work caring for terminal AIDS patients in Boston and East Tennessee gave him transformative insight and became the basis for his first book: “My Own Country: A Doctor's Story.” His other books include, “The Tennis Partner: A Story of Friendship and Loss” and “Cutting for Stone,” his first and current best-selling novel.
His writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Texas Monthly, Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
Verghese is the founding director of the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio.
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Miroslav Volf
Thursday, June 7, 4 p.m.
Shamblin Theatre
Volf, founder and director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, is actively involved in many top-level initiatives concerning Christian-Muslim relations and is a member of the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum.
Volf , who also serves as the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale University Divinity School, has written or edited 15 books, including “Exclusion and Embrace,” and over 70 scholarly articles.
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Fred Gray
Friday, June 8, 7 p.m.
Collins Alumni Auditorium
Fred David Gray, a native of Montgomery, Alabama, began his legal career as a sole practitioner, and at age 24, represented Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus and sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Gray was also Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s first civil rights lawyer and was counsel in preserving and protecting the rights of persons involved in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study in 1972.
Gray was one of the first African Americans to serve in the Alabama Legislature since reconstruction and was the first African American elected as president of the Alabama State Bar Association (2002-2003). He is the principal founder of the Tuskegee Human and Civil Rights Multicultural Center, which serves as a memorial to the participants of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and works to educate the public on the contributions made in the fields of human and civil rights by Native Americans, Americans of African descent and Americans of European descent.
As an author, Gray penned “Bus Ride to Justice,” “The Tuskegee Syphilis Study” and “The Sullivan Case: a Direct Product of the Civil Rights Movement,” a review for Case Western Reserve Law Review.
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Immaculée Ilibagiza
Saturday, June 9, 10:45 a.m.
Location: TBA
Huddled in a cramped room for 91 days Ilibagiza survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but emerged to discover her family brutally murdered. Overcoming immeasurable odds she eventually found it possible and imperative to forgive her tormentors and her family's murderers.
Anger and resentment were destroying her life and faith, but rather than succumb to rage Ilibagiza turned to prayer. Ilibagiza's faith empowered her to stare down a man armed with a machete threatening to kill and eventually address the ones who murdered her family, "I forgive you."
In 1998, Ilibagiza immigrated to the United States where she continues to work with the U.N. Her first book, “Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust” quickly became a New York Times best-seller, translated into 17 languages. Her compelling story has also been made into a documentary, “The Diary of Immaculée,” and she was featured in Michael Collopy’s Architects of Peace project, which has honored legendary peace makers like Mother Teresa, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama.