Thanks go out to our wonderful 2012 sponsors!
FCBF official booksellers:
The 2012 Fox Cities Reads is underway! Pick up a copy of Make the Impossible Possible by Bill Strickland at your local library and join in community-wide discussions about the book. The author will visit the Fox Cities April 16-18 during the Fox Cities Book Festival.
Author Biography
Elizabeth Cunningham, a direct descendant of nine generations of Episcopal priests, grew up hearing rich biblical and liturgical language and developed an appreciation for words. When she was not in church or school, she read fairytales and fantasy novels or wandered in the enchanted wood of an overgrown, abandoned estate next door to the rectory. Her religious background, the magic of fairytales, and the mystical aspects of nature continue to inform her work.
Today Cunningham is best known for The Maeve Chronicles, her series of novels about the Celtic Mary Magdalen. The books in this series are: Magdalen Rising, the Beginning (reissued 2007), The Passion of Mary Magdalen (2006), and Bright Dark Madonna (2009). A fourth and final Maeve Chronicles book is in progress. The Passion of Mary Magdalen, the centerpiece of the series, is the book Cunningham believes she was born to write. Some of her other works include the novels The Wild Mother, The Return of the Goddess, and How to Spin Gold.
Cunningham graduated from Harvard-Radcliffe College in 1976 with BA in English and American language and literature. In 1997, she graduated from The New Seminary and was ordained as an interfaith minister and counselor. Both The Maeve Chronicles and her interfaith ministry express her profound desire to reconcile her Christian roots with her call to explore the divine feminine.
The mother of grown children, Cunningham lives with her husband in a sacred grove in the Hudson Valley.
Additional Information
- For more about the author, including interviews, visit her website
- Elizabeth and Maeve on Twitter
- Elizabeth and Maeve on Blogspot
- Elizabeth Cunningham on Facebook
The picture quality of the video below isn't that great, but the interview content is wonderful.
The timeworn axiom is: “Write what you know,” but Elizabeth Cunningham says: “Write what you want to know.” In her twenty years of chronicling the escapades of Maeve, her feisty, unrepentant Celtic Mary Magdalen, Cunningham got to live a double life: she shared Maeve’s childhood among warrior witches on an isle in the Celtic Otherworld and then followed her heroic exploits at druid school where Maeve saved the life of a young foreign exchange student. Exiled for her pains to the heart of the Roman Empire, Maeve dragged her breathless author from slave markets to brothels, both holy and profane, immersing her in the ancient arts of whores and priestesses. Through Maeve’s eyes, arms, and heart, Cunningham lived the Gospel story. Life after Resurrection proved no less picaresque and perilous as Maeve fled the zeal of the Early Church through the pagan temples of Ephesus to a hermit cave in Gaul. Heading home to Britain at last, Maeve (and her author) had one more poignant challenge to face: the heartbreak of oppression and war.
Come catch tantalizing glimpses of this imaginary double life and be inspired to begin--or continue--your own daring and imaginative feats. Questions and discussion welcome.
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Big thanks go to Atlas Coffee Mill for hosting monthly meetings for the Fox Cities Book Festival Board! We appreciate your support of the Festival and just can't thank you enough for providing a welcoming meeting space for us to plan and dream.