Author: Ellen O'Connell Whittet

a photograph of a small white church in a wooded area

“I just went with my gut (and shut down my ego) and let the story tell itself”: An Interview with Mira Ptacin

Mira Ptacin’s new book is an exploration of Spiritualism’s history and its place in the current landscape of American faith practices. It also shows us, through the personal story Ptacin includes, how Spiritualism can help those still living and grieving after a loved one has died.

Women Mentoring Women in Sigrid Nunez’s Sempre Susan

Women Mentoring Women in Sigrid Nunez’s Sempre Susan

Sigrid Nunez’s memoir of the author’s relationship with Susan Sontag, the writer and doyenne of the twentieth-century New York intelligentsia, plays with the concept of the memoir genre. Nunez largely disappears from her own pages as she explains, through vignettes and remembered lines, Sontag’s mentorship.