Rewrite Radio

In episode #57 of Rewrite Radio , Helena María Viramontes shares her thoughts on prayer, compassion, and love to form a deeper connection with others. Theme music is Modern Attempt by TrackTribe and June 11 by Andrew Starr.

In Rewrite Radio episode #56, Doris Betts reads from her novel, Souls Raised from the Dead, at the 1994 Festival of Faith & Writing. This particular chapter involves a quick-witted conversation between the two grandmothers of the main character, Mary Grace, who is currently in the hospital. Theme music is Modern Attempt by TrackTribe and June 11 by Andrew Starr.

In Rewrite Radio Episode #55, writer, speaker, and traveler Daniel Taylor discusses the healing power of stories and the way stories make us a different person. Theme music is Modern Attempt by TrackTribe and June 11 by Andrew Starr.

In Rewrite Radio Episode #54, journalist Emma Green opens up her reporter’s notebook from her time spent living in Jerusalem, looking at the broader themes that animate global religion. Theme music is Modern Attempt by TrackTribe and June 11 by Andrew Starr.

In Rewrite Radio Episode #53, Luis Alberto Urrea shares his journey as a faithful writer—from a Tijuana garbage dump to Devil’s Highway. Theme music is Modern Attempt by TrackTribe and June 11 by Andrew Starr.

In Rewrite Radio Episode #52, Eugene Peterson and Scott Hoezee discuss teaching, preaching, and conversation at the 2010 Festival of Faith & Writing. Theme music is Modern Attempt by TrackTribe and June 11 by Andrew Starr.

In Rewrite Radio Episode #51, National Book Award winner Carlos Eire muses on the ethics of false memory, the power of images, and the story of thousands of children who, like him, were airlifted from Castro's Cuba, without their parents, in the early 1960's. Theme music is Modern Attempt by TrackTribe and June 11 by Andrew Starr.

In Rewrite Radio Episode #50, Jen Hatmaker and Jennifer Holberg discuss the truths that humor conveys, the need for good friends, and the problems facing evangelicals. Theme music is Modern Attempt by TrackTribe and June 11 by Andrew Starr.

In Rewrite Radio Episode #49, writer Lee Smith talks about and reads from her novel Saving Grace. Smith lets us into the stories behind her novels, her experiences with southern churches, and her fascination with all forms of ecstatic religion. Theme music is Modern Attempt by TrackTribe and June 11 by Andrew Starr.

In Rewrite Radio Episode #48, Walter Wangerin, Jr. begins his Festival talk by comparing hard rain on a roof to the sound of applause and praise, and he says that he found it his job to seek God in the common things and know that the whole earth is filled with God's glory. He also dives into the whole process of writing–from observation to idea to final product. Theme music is Modern Attempt by Tr...

In Rewrite Radio Episode #47, CCFW co-director Jennifer Holberg interviews some who have been there since the beginning of Festival: Henry J. Baron, Donald Hettinga, and Gary D. Schmidt. This episode shares the journey of the Festival’s past 30 years–its speakers, triumphs, difficulties–all driven by the idea for a place where writers of faith can learn from, appreciate, support, and affirm one an...

Episode 46 of Rewrite Radio features a collection of excerpts from our second season of the podcast, curated and edited together by CCFW media producerJon Brown and program coordinator Natalie Rowland. Join us as we journey through past Festival sessions in an exploration of stories as service. Speakers in order of appearance in this episode:Gene Luen Yang (2014)Richard Rodriguez (2010)Li-Young Le...

On this episode of Rewrite Radio, we go back to the first night of Festival 1998 and Nobel-prize-winning writer Elie Wiesel, who offers powerful and prophetic words as applicable today as they were then. The author of over 60 books, Elie Wiesel was born in what is now Romania. At 15, he was deported to Auschwitz. By the time of liberation in 1945, Wiesel had lost his mother, his father, and his yo...

Today on Rewrite Radio, we bring you Nikki Grimes, speaking at Festival 2018 about the potential story and poetry have to teach us empathy. Drawing examples from her own work, Grimes talks about the way that words can connect people across time and across cultures. The 2017 recipient of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for a “substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children,” Nikki Gr...

Today’s episode, a recording from the very first Festival in 1990 and it features Will Campbell. Campbell, a Baptist minister, is perhaps best known for his involvement in the Civil Rights movement, first through the National Council of Churches and then through the Committee of Southern Churchmen, through which he published Katallagete, the New Testament Greek for “be reconciled.” He was on the f...

In this session of Rewrite Radio, we listen back to a conversation with writer Yann Martel from Festival 2008. Interviewed by Otto Selles, a French professor and poet, Martel lets us into the stories behind his stories, the quirks of his freewheeling curiosity, and the ideas at play in his art and mind. Yann Martel is the author of four novels: The Life of Pi, which won the Man Booker Prize in 200...

Marilynne Robinson is the author of four novels: Housekeeping, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for the best first novel published in 1980; Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction; Home, the winner of the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction; and, most recently, Lila. Robinson has also written books of non-fiction, including Mother Country, The Death of Adam, Absence of Mind, Wh...

On today’s episode of Rewrite Radio: working in the television and movie industry, Abigail Disney and Dorothy Fortenberry are involved in making some of the most significant media today. In this wide-ranging conversation with Jennifer Holberg, co-director of the CCFW, they discuss the ethical imperatives that shape--and should shape--the stories we tell on-screen. Abigail Disney is an award-winnin...

In this episode of Rewrite Radio, we bring you a session from Festival 2004. Listen in as two poets—Li-Young Lee and Nick Samaras—define the “demonization” of lyrical language and explore the meaning of pauses articulate in poems. Along the way, they reminisce about their lives as readers and writers, speaking about their own stories as pilgrimage. Li-Young Lee has written five highly acclaimed vo...

On this Rewrite Radio: Calvin College chaplain, Mary Hulst--first woman ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in the US--interviews Rabbi Sandy Sasso, the first woman to have been ordained a rabbi in Reconstructionist Judaism. Sasso and Hulst discuss Judaism, feminism, and why children’s books are so significant. Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso is the author of several nationally acclaimed childre...

On this episode of Rewrite Radio: Scott Hoezee, a noted preacher himself and the director of the Center for Excellence in Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary, conducts a wide-ranging interview with Fleming Rutledge. Fleming Rutledge is an Episcopal priest and writer of nine books, including the award-winning The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. Ordained to the diaconate i...

On today’s Rewrite Radio, independent scholar Sarina Gruver Moore talks with author Afaa Michael Weaver about how his journey took him from factory work to a Fulbright and ultimately to a professorship and an established writing career--and the spiritual practices that helped him along the way. Afaa M. Weaver is a poet, short story writer, playwright, and editor. You need to listen to this episode...

On today’s episode, a look back to 2004 when the 2018 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Jacqueline Woodson, visited the Festival. As we listen back to the 2004 Festival, we hear Jacqueline Woodson consider how her upbringing, including her family’s faith commitments, prepared her for life as a writer, a mother, and a humanitarian. Though she writes for all ages, Jacqueline Woodson...

Today’s episode of Rewrite Radio features a conversation between the writers April Ayers Lawson and Jamie Quatro, hosted by Amy Frykholm. Titled “Sex, the Spirit, Short Stories, and South,” this conversation takes up the complicated work of writing about religious experience and sexual experience. It may not be appropriate for all listeners. Jamie Quatro writes fiction, poetry, and essays, and her...

On today’s Rewrite Radio, Kathleen Dean Moore, a philosopher and nature writer, proposes that the art of spiritual nature writing is to explore unfathomable ideas—mystery, astonishment, sanctity, despair—in the plain language of ice and frogs, returning stars, bells, birdsong, and pawprints in snow. The work of the nature writer, Moore argues, is to see the world—really see it, leaves and bones—an...