NEW PUBLICATIONS : CONNECTED: What Remains As We All Change, A Wising Up Anthology EPIPHANIES by Kathleen L. Housley GERMS OF TRUTH by Heather Tosteson Wising Up Writers Collective: Next Reading Period, January 2014
A WELCOMING PHILOSOPHY
The aim of Universal Table is to promote tolerance and social trust along many dimensions of life - or those are the words we have been using in our official mission statement. But each time we use them, we realize we are trying to describe something far broader - something that encompasses welcome, difference, surprise and inclusion, truthfulness and authenticity, and an equal place for each of us and what we hold most dear. These are the true goals of Universal Table: Finding the We in Them, the Us in You.
Our major activities are the books we create and publish through Wising Up Press, and the Universal Table workshops and research projects that both develop and support them. Our areas of particular interest are immigration & belonging, pluralism in familes, illness & meaning, social and psychological resiliency, creative aging, and listening across faiths - and the many other complex challenges and lasting rewards of living up close and personal with pluralism in social, family, religious, and civic life.
What distinguishes our approach is an equal emphasis on the why and the how of living well with difference. Through our research projects, we are developing new interpretations of chronic areas of social discord, interpretations that make it safer for us to interact from a position of respect and appreciation with people who have very different world views and value systems.
We are equally interested in specific techniques, especially the use of story and other art forms, to help us change our patterns of direct personal interaction, so that we can live out our best intentions. What ways of thinking, imagining, listening, speaking and being with one another truly expand our worlds? For real, sustainable change takes place at the day by day, person by person, word by word, gesture by gesture level - and it isn't easy and it isn't simple. But fascinating, rewarding, energizing, inspiring, and worth all the effort - without a doubt.
NEW PUBLICATIONS
NEW PUBLICATION: ANTHOLOGY
CONNECTED:What Remains As We All Change A Wising Up Anthology
In this anthology, thirty-two talented writers invite us to explore with them, through story, memoir, and poetry, what remains as we all change—within families, between friends, between lovers, through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, career change, gender change, marriage, parenthood, divorce, illness, disability, and death. The writing here is strikingly mature—and moving—whether the writer is nineteen or ninety . . .
The question at the heart of Epiphanies is: What does it mean to be human when the definition of human is in flux? For example, in Pavane for a Dead Rover, Housley explores whether it is possible to grieve for a robot. In Psalm for a New Human Species, she asks what such a discovery would mean to a person’s sense of self-worth. She, then, turns to Leonardo da Vinci who lived a life of epiphany. If things were right side up, he turned them upside down, intentionally disorienting himself to gain understanding. . . .
GERMS OF TRUTH A book about life, death, families of all ages, stages, and orientation—and sperm banks. by Heather Tosteson
In this engaging and thoughtful collection of short stories, we find people of all ages trying to make sense—poignant, often funny, sometimes wise—of the many, changing ways they intersect as parents, children, and families from conception to death.
We consider completed, individually authored manuscripts: novels, short story collections, memoirs, creative non-fiction, and full-length poetry collections. FOR FULL GUIDELINES
The collective is designed to publish books with talented writers who have published sufficiently to be confident of the literary quality of their work and who enjoy the synergy of publishing in community with other writers whose work resonates well with the subject areas of the press and its social commitment to Finding the We in Them, the Us in You.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO HOST A WISING UP HOUSE READING or START A READING FOR RELATION GROUP?
We see our books, especially our
Wising Up Anthologies, as catalysts for community, a way of deepening the
conversations that develop through the shared experience of reading, especially
around areas of sticky, or strident, social concern . . . Read More
Universal Table Finding the We in Them, the Us in You. Wising Up Press
www.universaltable.org P.O. Box 2122, Decatur, GA 30031-2122 404-276-6046
