â—¼ During a luncheon held at Frontera Grill in Chicago on Friday, January 10, 2014, CCL honored several individuals for their outstanding contributions to the life of the mind and the work of the spirit.

The Lifetime Achievement Award was given to the award-winning fiction writer, Katherine Paterson. At the luncheon, Dale Brown, Director of the Buechner Center at King College – Mrs. Paterson’s alma mater — offered a moving tribute to the range of her accomplishments and the depth of her engagement with the Christian faith and the lives of young readers. To read Professor Brown’s tribute, click here.

After Dale Brown’s tribute, CCL President Roger Lundin presented Katherine Paterson with a plaque whose inscription read as follows:

The Conference on Christianity and Literature honors Katherine Paterson as the recipient of its Lifetime Achievement Award — We do so with profound appreciation for the sensitive brilliance of her work as a writer of fiction for young people and for her unstinting efforts to promote the beauty, power, and pleasures of reading. Seeking to share the gift of grace she has received through stories, Katherine Paterson has offered abiding words of hope, faith, and love to several generations of grateful readers.

At the luncheon, we also honored Sharon Kim (Judson University) for her Book of the Year award (click here) and Christopher Denny (St. Johns University) as the recipient of the 2013 Lionel Basney Award (click here), which goes to the Best Essay published in Volume 62 of the journal Christianity & Literature during the previous year.

 

â—¼ CCL sponsored two sessions at the MLA. The first was a reading by LAA recipient Katherine Paterson 

575. A Reading and Conversation with Katherine Paterson

Saturday, 11 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Chicago D, Chicago Marriott

Program arranged by the Conference on Christianity and Literature

Presiding: Roger W. Lundin, Wheaton Coll., IL

Speaker: Katherine Paterson, Barre, VT

  

â—¼ The second session was organized by Katherine Bassard (Virginia Commonwealth U) and was co-sponsored by the Division of Literature and Religion:

384. Literary Crossroads: African American Literature and Christianity

Friday, 10 January, 5:15–6:30 p.m., Addison, Chicago Marriott

Program arranged by the Conference on Christianity and Literature and the Division on Literature and Religion

Presiding: Katherine Clay Bassard, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.

1. "God's Trombones, the Social Gospel, and the Harlem Renaissance," Jonathan Fedors, Univ. of Pennsylvania

2. "When the Gospel Sings the Blues in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man," Claudia Rosemary May, Univ. of California, Berkeley

3. "Faith Moves: Belief and the Body in Bill T. Jones's Chapel/Chapter and Toni Morrison's Paradise," Leslie Elizabeth Wingard, Coll. of Wooster