Dorothy Day and the Church of Our Time (I)

Is it a violation of the supposed spirit of Lenten humility to draw attention to one's latest publication? Regardless, here it is: a volume I co-edited along with my colleague and friend Lance Richey, based on the conference held last May here at the University of Saint Francis on the life and work of Dorothy Day: Dorothy Day and the Church: Past, Present, and Future (Solidarity Hall Press, 2016), 434pp.

Lance and I, along with many others, helped to organize a fantastic group of speakers from France, Canada, and across these United States. We were happy that most of them agreed to publish their papers after the conference. 

This is a rich collection, and the size of it makes the price very affordable indeed. I will have more to say about the contents in the days ahead, but let me here note what a pleasure it was to work with Solidarity Hall Press, a relatively young publisher with a fantastic crew, especially its publisher Elias Crim; and then with the book designer, Paul Bowman of New York, who did a lovely job on cover, art, and layout. Solidarity Hall has already published one book of significance, and their unique model positions them very well indeed for further publishing and other ventures.

Here is the standard blurb about the book, with more details to follow:

From the introduction by Lance Richey: “The University of Saint Francis and Our Sunday Visitor sponsored the conference ‘Dorothy Day and the Church: Past, Present and Future’ in Fort Wayne on May 13–15, 2015. In planning it, we kept in mind (not without some trepidation) Dorothy’s own complaint on academic conferences in her April 1966 On Pilgrimage column: ‘That is the trouble with such conferences. There are too many workshops, too many meetings, so many speakers, making the sessions too long.’ The enthusiastic response we received to our announcement threatened to make her warning only too prescient. More than 120 attendees, scholars and workers, gathered together to celebrate both her remarkable life and enduring legacy for the Church. This volume gathers together most of the papers and homilies given at this conference, offering a breadth and depth of material which will benefit both casual and scholarly readers, and both students and practitioners of her experiment in gospel living.”