“I really want to be aware of how much wonder and strangeness and brokenness is around us. I find myself in awe so much. Poetry is a way to explore those things.” — Susanna Childress
Listen in as WAP associate Caroline Triscik interviews author, poet, and professor Susanna Childress about her journey into tenured faculty position, her personal griefs along the way, and her strategies for retaining her sense of joy and wonder.
"I first met Susanna Childress in my mid-twenties at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College. I’m not entirely sure how I ended up attending the session where she did a reading from her first volume of poetry, Jagged with Love, but I do remember immediately connecting with her exploration of ideas like forgiveness, love, and longing for God and others. Nearly 15 years later, we sit down to talk about some of the most significant experiences in her current season of life — including the gifts and challenges of life as a woman in academia, the grief of miscarriage, and being present with suffering and sorrow.
"Listen in on our conversation as Susanna offers her thoughts on finding wonder and awe in the midst of everyday life in her roles as an English professor and a mother. Susanna shares her intensely personal story of the loss of her third son late in the second trimester of pregnancy as well as her journey of navigating that grief while in the interview process for tenure — and the gift of entering into sorrow and suffering together."
— Caroline Triscik
You can listen on iTunes or at All Shall Be Well: Conversations with Women in the Academy and Beyond. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.
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