Kathleen Norris

Kathleen Norris's masterpiece: a personal and moving memoir that resurrects the ancient term acedia, or soul-weariness, and brilliantly explores its relevancy to the modern individual and culture.

A fictionalized biography of Saints Benedict and Scholastica, twins who lived in sixth-century Italy. Their humanity rather than their saintliness is emphasized. Ages 4-9.

"Having spent her sheltered high school years in Hawaii, Kathleen Norris was woefully unprepared for Bennington College in the 1960s. Confronting its culture of drugs, sex, and bohemianism, she felt like Alice down the rabbit hole, without recognizable signposts or directions. But it was also at Bennington that she discovered a great love of poetry, which carried her to New York City at a time when a new generation of poets was emerging and shaking up the establishment.". "Working behind the scenes on behalf of these poets was Elizabeth Kray, a pioneer in arts administration who ran the Academy of American Poets and was known for her creative programs and compassionate support of poets. Norris took a job working for Kray at the Academy. By night, she received a different kind of education at Max's Kansas City and other clubs with Andy Warhol's crowd.". "The Virgin of Bennington is her memoir of that time and place - of her friendships and encounters with writers, including Jim Carroll, Denise Levertov, Gerard Malanga, Erica Jong, James Merrill, James Wright, and Stanley Kunitz; of New York City, with its nightspots, taxicabs, rooftops, railroad apartments, seedy lofts, and elegant townhouses; and of her own development as a poet. It is a love letter to the city that fueled her imagination, to poetry, and to Betty Kray, who sustained her during the tenuous balancing act between naive experimentation and the responsibilities of adulthood, who convinced her that it was possible for a person to "live by her wits," and then showed Norris that she herself was capable of doing so. And it is the story of the events that led to her decision to leave New York for a small town in South Dakota with the man who would become her husband, a move she chronicled so memorably in Dakota: A Spiritual Geography."--BOOK JACKET.

"In this insightful and deeply personal work, Kathleen Norris, an award-winning poet and author of both Dakota: A Spiritual Geography and The Cloister Walk, draws on her life experiences, her poetry and her love of the Benedictine tradition to discuss the mysterious way that the daily or "quotidian" can open us to the transforming presence of God."--BOOK JACKET. "This volume is the text of the 1998 Madeleva Lecture in Spirituality, sponsored by the Center for Spirituality at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana."--BOOK JACKET.

A New York Times bestseller for 23 weeksA New York Times Notable Book of the Year"A strange and beautiful book...Part memoir, part meditation, it is a remarkable piece of writing." -The Boston Globe"The Cloister Walk is a new opportunity to discover a remarkable writer with a huge, wise heart...Norris resonates deeply for a lot of people: She's one of those writers who demands to be handed around. You want to share this great discovery, giving her work as a gift3/4or you simply shove a copy in the face of a friend, saying 'Read this.'" -Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Can one be a "fully-realized human being" outside New York? Many people have intense, complex and ambivalent feelings about the city and the mindset that is New York. The essays and poems that make up Leaving New York look at writers' attitudes over the years toward the city's physical place and emotional and spiritual pull. Some leave, never to return, but carry New York in their hearts. Many talk of leaving but never make the move, while others come and go. All have deep responses to the experience of the city. This is a rich and varied collection of reflections on the role of place in our lives. There are original essays by Leslie Brody, Frank Conroy, Bill McKibben, Kathleen Norris and Mona Simpson, with a separate introduction by Kathleen Norris. There are previously published pieces by twenty-seven authors from Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald to Joan Didion and Toni Morrison.

A collection of twenty-six essays by American authors, chosen by guest editor Kathleen Norris as the best to be published in 2000, including selections by Stephen King, Diane Ackerman, and Reynolds Price.

"A new translation of the Greek alphabetical Apophthegmata Patrum, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Includes expansive notes and glossary texts"--