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Marilyn SewellThe Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell is an accomplished Unitarian Universalist minister, and a respected writer, leader, activist, and speaker. She teaches on the adjunct faculty of Maitripa, a Buddhist college in Portland. Learn more about Marilyn.

Marilyn is the subject of the award-winning documentary film Raw Faith, and for years contributed to The Huffington Post where her articles are now archived. She has authored and edited eleven books, including her latest: In Time’s Shadow: Stories About Impermanence.

Marilyn is available as a speaker and workshop presenter for large and small groups. Her warmth, insight and humor enable her to connect with a wide range of audiences.

Marilyn was pleased to participate in a virtual reading of her latest book In Time’s Shadow: Stories About Impermanence, June 2nd, 2020 in coordination with Annie Bloom’s Books. A video recording of the reading is available for your enjoyment. Thank you to all who participated.

 

Marilyn Sewell Virtual Event Graphic

 

In In Time’s Shadow, minister, author, and activist Marilyn Sewell reflects on the everyday—the places we live and work, the thoughts we all have but hardly ever share—though these musings may carry the most profound of our human concerns. Using a variety of short literary forms, ranging from dramatic monologues, vignettes, and letters, to prose poems, fantasy, and more, Sewell’s fiction offers insightful, compassionate slices of life that will bring laughter and, at the same time, take you deeper into the mysteries of life: a lonely woman is distressed because her plant has stopped blooming; marriage partners talk past each other in a therapy session; a man comes across a ragtag street band in New Orleans and reconsiders his life choices. These short, compelling readings reveal the cultural incongruities and inanities that crowd our lives. We love, we lose, we die, and through it all, we ask, “What’s it all about?” Sewell invites us to ponder with her and perhaps come to trust our common humanity and our most noble instincts.

Marilyn speaks at length about In Time’s Shadow with Dr. Paul Louis Metzger in this video interview:

New Wine Tastings: Finding the Momentous in Passing Moments, An Interview with Marilyn Sewell

 


Praise for In Time’s Shadow:

Through the spaces between people in these beguiling fictions, love wanders like a ghost, offering whispered hints of solace against a backdrop of isolating divisions. In the spirit of the enigmatic stories of Lydia Davis, Isak Dinesen, Yasunari Kawabata, and other masters of the ironic parable, Sewell offers companionship for readers longing to navigate a world of faltering connections.
— Kim Stafford, author of 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared


Only someone with a “servant’s heart,” a heart devoted to compassionate service, could write these vivid tesserae and then arrange them to create the glowing mosaic we find in Marilyn Sewell’s In Time’s Shadow.
— Paulann Peterson, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita and author of One Small Sun


In Time’s Shadow is both a serious and quirky, intimate and universal exploration of what it means to be human in our hurried, conflicted world. Sewell illuminates the daily lives of human beings struggling to come to terms with their bodily and spiritual existences in a culture of “the lost.”
— John Sibley Williams, author of As One Fire Consumes Another


Reading Marilyn Sewell’s short fiction is like pulling back the curtain to a hidden room and peering into the private, intimate lives of the characters. In the spirit of Lydia Davis and Franz Kafka, readers are given access to the thoughts and hearts of people who, like us, struggle to make sense of an often confusing and troubling world.
— Jennifer Springsteen, author of Wallace Farm


In Time’s Shadow is a most welcome collection of brief, engaging, and meaningful narratives written by a writer who, with wisdom and humor, exposes us to characters who could well be ourselves. These narratives—in the forms of vignettes, fables, letters, and poems—emphasize the uselessness of regret and the importance of love in all its embodiments.
— Andrea Hollander, author of Blue Mistaken for Sky