To all who have been waiting for the news (and with apologies for my 24-hour lack of internet access), here it is: Jen Epstein is the winner of Pitch Week X at When Words Count.  Jen’s edgy, insightful, hilarious essays about life as a young(ish) Brooklynite struggling with OCD are collected in her book Don’t Get Too Excited: It’s Just a Pair of Shoes and Other Laments from My Life.  This is an amazing opportunity for Jen, and I’m truly happy for her.

So what about Finding God in Ordinary Time?  

I am excited to announce that I have been offered a publishing contract from Green Writers Press with an anticipated launch next fall!  I’m going to take a beat to ponder and pray, and to consult with people who know the publishing world better than I do.  But I’m thinking that this thing may have God’s fingerprints all over it.  Curious?

Read on . . .

Three summers ago I went on retreat at the Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth in Wernersville, PA (or God’s country house, as I like to call it).  I spent many hours praying with a book of poetry: Mary Oliver’s Thirst. The poem I savored most is called “Praying;” I even tucked it in at the end of my manuscript as an homage, because it says in just a few precious words (the poet’s gift!) what I have tried to express throughout my book. When I met the judges in August I discovered that Thirst (as well as three of Mary Oliver’s other books) actually had been designed by . . . wait for it . . . Dede Cummings, founder of Green Writers Press and one of the judges for Pitch Week X.

(As I say in the book, I can’t make this stuff up!)

I went into Pitch Week not knowing how it would end but holding the outcome lightly, trusting that good would unfold.  And as I said at the beginning of this journey, there are many roads up the mountain, many paths to God.

Stay tuned!