Thursday, August 27, 2009
Believer

Laurel Snyder, a Writers' Workshop alum, and Michael Allen Potter, a graduate student in the Nonfiction Writing Program, are both featured in the new anthology, "Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith," published by Beacon Press. This engaging collection of ambivalent confessions, skeptical testimonies, and personal revelations presents true tales of the stranger dilemmas of faith and doubt and religion lost and found.

A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Michener-Engle Fellow, Laurel Snyder is the author of two novels for children, “Any Which Wall” and “Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains OR The Search for a Suitable Princess” (Random House) and two picture books, “Inside the Slidy Diner” and “Baxter the Kosher Pig.” (Tricycle). In addition to her books for children, Laurel has written two books of poems, “Daphne & Jim: a choose-your-own-adventure biography in verse” (Burnside Review Press, 2005) and “The Myth of the Simple Machines” (No Tell Books, 2007). She also edited an anthology of nonfiction, “Half/Life: Jew-ish tales from Interfaith Homes” (Soft Skull Press, 2006).

Michael Allen Potter holds degrees in English and Theatre Arts and is currently a graduate student in the Nonfiction Writing Program where he is completing a memoir about adoption, identity, and the search for his family.