LECTURES

 Talented writers from the greater Boston area (and beyond) will gather at the Center for the Arts at the Armory in Somerville on Saturday, September 29th from 2:00-5:00 pm to read from their contributions to the Wising Up Anthologies. Participants will read from 2:00-4:00, with time for the audience to meet and talk with contributors, the Wising Up Press publishers, and Wising Up Writers Collective afterwards. Participants include local writers Susan Chernillo, William Henderson, Kathleen Kelley, Robert Knox, Mariette Landry, Kerry Langan, Michele Markarian, Ara Sarkissian, Ada Jill Schneider, Alexandrina Sergio, Ruth Silin, Isabelle Smith, Pat Sullivan, Andy Weatherwax; Wising Up Press writer/publishers Heather Tosteson and Charles Brockett; and Wising Up Writers Collective members Kerry Langan, Kathleen Housley, Maria Nazos, Evelyn Sharenov. Universal Table/Wising Up Press is an organization dedicated to exploring the complex challenges and lasting rewards of living up close and personal with pluralism in social, family, religious, and civic life, or, more simply, Finding the 'We' in 'Them', the 'Us' in 'You'. Wising Up Anthologies use literature by contemporary writers to explore various dimensions of pluralism because of the power of narrative to help us identify safely with others who may at first seem, by appearance or circumstances or culture, very different from us. The anthologies serve as an invitation to stand in that richer relation—empathic, musing, open to new meaning—with ourselves and with our neighbors. The subjects the press focuses on are families and resilience, illness and meaning, creative aging, listening across faiths, and immigration and belonging. The seven published Wising Up Anthologies are Illness & Grace: Terror & Transformation; Families: The Frontline of Pluralism; Love After 70; Double Lives, Reinvention & Those We Leave Behind; Shifting Balance Sheets: Women's Stories of Natural Citizenship & Cultural Attachment; Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration, Citizenship & Belonging. Daring to Repair: What is it, who does it, and why? is scheduled for publication later this year. For more information about Wising Up Press: Visit www.universaltable.org and the Wising Up Press channel on You Tube. E-mail: wisingup@universaltable.org Phone: 404/276-6046. Local Contact: Michele Markarian: 617-441-0614 or michele.markarian@gmail.com