Posted on May 5, 2015 by PLT Staff

Capps lecture given by Lauren Winner at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. Winner discusses memoir writers and some of the ways they approach discussing God. She begins with an excerpt from her memoir in which she depicts her withdrawal from, and eventual return to, prayer. She then shares her definition of memoir and her views on how to write a good spiritual memoir. To browse all of the lectures given as part of the Capps Lecture series, click here. For a listing of all our Occasional Lectures, click here.

Excerpt: “Particularly with spiritual memoir the memoirs that we have been reading for the last 10 or 15 years…those memoirs are united by a certain narrative point of view. What I mean by that is that the narrator takes the posture in these memoirs not of someone who is instructing or lecturing her audience, not of someone who is necessarily trying to impart wisdom or explicitly edify her audience. The narrator is rather positing herself as a fellow pilgrim, who is simply making her pilgrimage on her way to and with God and invites the reader to walk along with her for a little while, for part of that journey.”

• Video Information
• Date Recorded:April 10, 2012
• Location Recorded:Charlottesville, VA
• Speaker: Lauren Winner