Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum: Reflections on Good Friday
In this epic narrative, Lanier unfolds the drama of Christ’s passion as seen through the eyes of the women in the Gospels. Her searing poetry connects women’s suffering and oppression in male-dominated culture directly to Christ’s great mystery of redemption and triumph over the forces of ignorance and evil. Lanier upholds virtuous women as Christ’s true imitators.
Read MoreShakespeare’s Sisters—A Celebration of Renaissance Women Writers
April 23, 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death with worldwide celebrations to mark his legacy. But what about the women? In her essay A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf imagines the life of Shakespeare’s brilliant sister Judith, barred from the grammar school because of her sex and forced to hide her writing from her family. To escape a forced, arranged marriage, she runs away to London to seek her fortune in the theatre, only to end up pregnant, abandoned, and destitute. Out of despair, she kills herself. “It would have been impossible, completely and entirely...
Read MoreLammas-tide and Harvest Home
August 1 marks the beginning of the grain harvest in Britain, a period of intense labour and also celebration. In our age of convenience foods perhaps it’s hard to imagine how important the harvest was in centuries past. The harvest could be poor, or fail entirely. If a community suffered two bad harvests in a row, entire families would starve.The word “Lammas” derives from the Anglo-Saxon “hlaef-mass” or loaf mass. The first grain of the year would be reaped and then baked into a bread, which was consecrated in the church upon the first Sunday of August. A...
Read MoreAbout Mary Sharratt
An American author living on the Silver Coast of Portugal, Mary Sharratt is on a mission to write women back into history. She is the author of Revelations and seven previous critically acclaimed novels, including Daughters of the Witching Hill, the Nautilus Award–winning Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen, The Dark Lady’s Mask: A Novel of Shakespeare’s Muse, and Ecstasy, about the life, loves, and music of Alma Mahler. When she is not writing, you can find her riding her beautiful Welsh mare.
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