Spiritual Memoir--Biography

About the Author
Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew is a writing instructor and spiritual director living in Minneapolis, MN. She is a recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board artists' fellowship, the Loft Career Initiative Grant, and a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. Elizabeth's writing explores intersections between sexual identity, spiritual growth and the creative process.
Classes
She teaches memoir, essay and journal writing at the Loft Literary Center, United Theological Seminary, and Hamline University. Her current class offerings are listed on this website. You can read her Loft profile here.

Services
For information on hiring Elizabeth as a writing coach, teacher, or speaker, click here.

Books
Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Spiritual Memoir
Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir
On the Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness

Essays
Elizabeth's work is anthologized in Riding Shotgun: Women Write About Their Mothers and My Red Couch and Other Stories on Seeking a Feminist Faith. She has published essays and short memoirs in The Christian Century, Fourth Genre, Many Mountains Moving, The Florida Review, and other literary and religious journals.

Features
Elizabeth is profiled in Jon Spayde's new book, How to Believe, in which Spayde interviews a vast variety of people of faith as part of his own quest.

Links
www.mnartists.org: An online database of Minnesota artists and organizations.
www.minnesotaliterature.org: The only state-wide resource for Minnesota writers. Contains an events calendar and calls for submissions.
www.loft.org: The Loft Literary Center website.
www.stonetreeuu.org: Stonetree serves Unitarian Universalist congregations by offering a UU recommended resource directory.
www.twincircles.org: The website for Sacred Circle Dance in the Twin Cities, where Elizabeth leads dance.
www.lgbtran.org: The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Religious Archives Network.

Writing is a chance to participate in creation. We create by listening to our inner voice, in all its whimsy and profundity. We create by tracing our ideas onto the page. We create by heeding the will of our stories, following their lead into sharper insight. And we create by releasing our words so they may spit and spark in others' hearts. We ourselves are created for having written. Our words are like a fishing line cast far into our own future, and we reel ourselves forward into a new way of being.

As a writer, I invite the reader to explore with me the life of the Spirit--how we are each called into the fullness of our being; our responsibility to articulate personal truth and thus bring about justice and social change; and what it means to serve the source of love at the center of creation.