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September 10, 2024
9781985900646
English
208
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$50.00 USD, £45.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference
Electronic book text
September 10, 2024
9781985900660
9781985900646
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208
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September 10, 2024
9781985900653
English
208
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5.50 Inches (US)
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v2.1 Reference
Electronic book text
September 10, 2024
9781985900677
9781985900646
English
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5.50 Inches (US)
$50.00 USD, £45.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference

I Could Name God in Twelve Ways

Essays

I could dream in poetry, could summon words for spiritual experience, could name God in twelve ways and in ten times and places in history.

Award-winning writer Karen Salyer McElmurray details her life's journey across continents and decades in a poetic collection that is equal parts essay-as-memoir, memoir-as-Künstlerroman, and travelogue-as-meditation.

It is about the deserts of India. A hospital ward in Maryland. The blue seas of Greece. A greenhouse in Virginia. It is about the spirit houses of Thailand. The mountains of eastern Kentucky. The depths of the Grand Canyon. A creative writing classroom in Georgia. An attic in a generations-old house. It is about coming to terms with both memory and the power of writing itself.

At turns lyrical, poignant, and alluring, McElmurray probes her personal history from the stance of different places, perspectives, and vulnerabilities as she tenderly and fiercely searches for acceptance and a place to call home.

About the Author

Karen Salyer McElmurray is the author of Wanting Radiance: A Novel. Her memoir Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother's Journey is a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book and winner of the AWP Award Series for Creative Nonfiction. She has received numerous awards, including the Annie Dillard Prize, the New Southerner Literary Prize, the Orison Anthology Award, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and multiple notable mentions in Best American Essays. She is a visiting writer and lecturer at various programs and reading series across the United States.

Reviews

"McElmurray teaches us how to reckon and ravel, how to unpack secrets, abandon maps, and learn from everything, even vertigo, even a global pandemic. This book is for everyone who has ever felt vulnerable in this world, which is to say, everyone."—Julie Marie Wade, author of Otherwise: Essays and Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing

"'What does it mean to come from the center of a labyrinth and find one's way out?' is a question these essays ask and answer with exquisite urgency. For McElmurray, writing is both a compass and an act of faith, and what a compass she wields, what faith, to lead us out of her labyrinths with a rare blend of fearlessness and vulnerability."—James Tate Hill, author of Blind Man's Bluff: A Memoir

"A psychedelic dreamworld metaphysical journey and spellbinding story of a life."—Cat Pleska, author of Riding on Comets: A Memoir

"Lyrical and radically fearless stories about suffering and revelations of beauty. You'll be spellbound in the current of a masterful storyteller."—Annie Woodford, author of Where You Come from Is Gone: Poems

"The essays in this stunning collection are elegiac, urgent, vulnerable—full of loss and longing. Although the narrative is rooted in Kentucky, the scope is global as the narrator travels literally and metaphorically toward love and away from the ghosts of the past."—Sue William Silverman, author of Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul

"A great pleasure to read. These lyrical essays explore what it means to leave a place where one has deep familial roots and to travel far and wide, geographically and culturally, without ever escaping the pull of home and its mysteries, richness, and sadness."—Zoe Zolbrod, author of The Telling: A Memoir
University Press of Kentucky
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9781985900646 : i-could-name-god-in-twelve-ways-mcelmurray
Hardback
September 10, 2024
$50.00 USD
9781985900660 : i-could-name-god-in-twelve-ways-mcelmurray
Electronic book text
September 10, 2024
$26.00 USD
9781985900653 : i-could-name-god-in-twelve-ways-mcelmurray
Paperback / softback
September 10, 2024
$26.00 USD
9781985900677 : i-could-name-god-in-twelve-ways-mcelmurray
Electronic book text
September 10, 2024
$50.00 USD

Other Titles by Karen Salyer McElmurray

Wanting Radiance

Karen Salyer McElmurray, with contributions by Christina Meares
Nov 2021 - South Limestone, an imprint of University Press of Kentucky
$19.95 USD - Paperback / softback

Wanting Radiance

Karen Salyer McElmurray
Apr 2020 - South Limestone, an imprint of University Press of Kentucky
$24.95 USD - Hardback
$24.95 USD - Electronic book text
$24.95 USD - Electronic book text

Other Titles in BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs

Bluegrass Craftsman

edited by Frances L. S. Dugan and Jacqueline P. Bull
Dec 2025 - University Press of Kentucky
$30.00 USD - Paperback / softback
$12.95 USD - Electronic book text

Black Officer, White Navy

Reuben Keith Green. Foreword by John P. Cordle.
Jun 2024 - University Press of Kentucky
$60.00 USD - Hardback
$30.00 USD - Electronic book text
$30.00 USD - Paperback / softback

Mi madre, mi maestra, critical edition

Bahia Mahmud Awah. Edited by Dorothy Odartey-Wellington.
May 2024 - Modern Language Association of America
$25.00 USD - Paperback / softback

Other Titles in Literature & literary studies

The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature

Joseph Valente, Margot Gayle Backus, foreword by Fintan O'Toole
Dec 2020 - Indiana University Press
$28.00 USD - Paperback / softback

Times of Mobility

edited by Jasmina Lukić, Sibelan Forrester, Borbála Faragó
Mar 2020 - Central European University Press
$100.00 USD - Hardback

The Third Spring

Adam Schwartz
Feb 2012 - The Catholic University of America Press
$34.95 USD - Paperback / softback