In the highly praised memoir Things Seen and Unseen, Nora Gallagher reflected on a year of spiritual renewal and the fact of mortality with uncommon wisdom and grace. We rejoin her in Practicing Resurrection as Gallagher searches for direction in the wake of her brother’s death. A desire to reclaim her own “wild life” and a sense of the sacred in the world compels her to assess everything: her marriage, her writing career, and her commitment to parish life. A profound testimony to the urgency of living with meaning, to the natural world’s solace and sacredness and a beautiful and often harrowing account of the search for vocation. Gallagher bears witness to the way death yields new life.
Nora Gallagher's novel Changing Light has received outstanding reviews in the New York Times Book Review, the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times. It is one of three novels chosen by Borders for its March-April Original Voices program. Her memoir Things Seen and Unseen: A Year Lived in Faith received outstanding reviews from the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times among many others and was a bestseller. Annie Dillard called it ' a wonderful book' and said, 'Nora Gallagher...describes church life and spiritual life with absolute accuracy." Her second memoir, Practicing Resurrection, received outstanding reviews and was a finalist for Beliefnet Book of the Year.
She was born in New Mexico, and spent her childhood in its high deserts. After college she worked as a free-lance magazine journalist in the United States, Nicaragua, and Czechoslovakia. Ms. Gallagher is particularly interested in what happens to ordinary people in the shadow of larger events.
Her essays, book reviews, op-eds and journalism have appeared in many publications including The New York Times Magazine, DoubleTake, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Utne Reader, The Village Voice, Mother Jones, and The Los Angeles Times.
Ms. Gallagher has received fellowships from the Wesleyan Writers Conference, Blue Mountain Center,the MacDowell Colony; and Mesa Refuge.
A sermon is collected in Sermons that Work (Morehouse Publishing March 2003) and a poem in the anthology, September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond.
She is licensed to preach by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, is preacher-in-residence at Trinity Episcopal Church, Santa Barbara and serves on the advisory board of the Yale Divinity School. She lives in California and New York City with her husband, the novelist and poet, Vincent Stanley. They are the godparents of five children.
