Story, Culture, & the Common Good, with Marilynne Robinson

Trinity Forum Conversations

On Friday, July 24th we were honored to host award-winning and much-beloved novelist and essayist, Marilynne Robinson for a wide-ranging conversation on the art of writing as a means of exploring truth and engaging the questions around learning to live well, to love others, and to create a home and community in an often fractious world. Robinson, known for her keen observations on humanity and religion has plumbed the depths of the human spirit in her novels, including the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Lila, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead. We hope you enjoy this conversation on “Story, Culture, and the Common Good.”

Watch the full Online Conversation and read the transcript here.

Marilynne Robinson's Novels | Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, Lila

Article in Breaking Ground from our event.

Authors and books mentioned in the conversation:

Marcel Proust

Ralph Waldo Emmerson

Paul Harding

Walt Witman

William Faulkner

John Calvin

Jonathan Edwards

Moby Dick, by Herman Mellville

Piers Plowman, by William Langland

Related Trinity Forum Readings:

• Sacred and Profane Love | A Trinity Forum Reading by John Donne
  
• Bulletins from Immortality | A Trinity Forum Reading by Emily Dickinson
  
• Confessions | A Trinity Forum Reading by Saint Augustine
  
• Brave New World | A Trinity Forum Reading by Aldous Huxley

Marilynne Robinson is a novelist, essayist, and teacher, one of the most renowned and revered of living writers. Her novels Housekeeping, Gilead, Lila, and Home have been variously honored with the Pulitzer Prize, National Books Critics Circle Award (twice), a Hemingway Foundation Award, an Orange Prize, The Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and the Ambassador Book Award. She's also the author of many essays and non-fiction works, including her work, “Mother Country”, and her essay collections, “Death of Adam,” “Absence of Mind,” “When I was a Child I Read Books,” “The Givenness of Things,” and “What Are We Doing Here?”. She's the recipient of the National Humanities Medal and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to her writing has spent over 20 years teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop, as well as several universities.