Upcoming Events

For those of you in Seattle/Bellevue/Issaquah, Emma and I will be signing books alongside fellow members of the Pacific NW Writers Association on Saturday, 14 December, at the Writers Cottage in Gilman Village (The Cottage is located near the southeastern corner of the Village shopping center, just off Juniper Street (behind White Horse toys and next to the Boarding House Restaurant). The event runs from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, and Emma and I will be there for the last two hours, 2-4 pm. We’d love to see you!

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And coming up on this blog, tomorrow I host yet another inspiring historian, Julie A. Chappell, who will give you a taste of her book Perilous Passages: The Book of Margery Kempe, 1534-1934, published by Palgrave Macmillan. Her book is in the genre of scholar adventures, an account of how she tracked this important medieval manuscript from 15th century King’s Lynn to the early 20th century, when it was “discovered.”

Who was Margery Kempe? Here’s a succinct description from the back jacket of Anthony Goodman’s book (which I’m currently rereading), Margery Kempe and Her World (Longman 2002): “Margery Kempe is one of the most extraordinary figures in English medieval history. Daughter of a mayor of King’s Lynn, wife of a burgess and mother of fourteen children, she was also the author of the first surviving autobiography composed by an Englishwoman. The Book of Margery Kempe, dictated in the 1430s, survives in a single manuscript which was discovered in the 1930s. It is an uninhibited…outpouring of impassioned religious emotions. The Book comprises an account of the mystical intimations of a lady born into Lynn’s stately but troubled elite. Visionary episodes are interlinked with equally dramatic accounts of mundane experiences, in Margery’s home town, in other parts of England, and as far afield as Jerusalem, Rome and Brandenburg.”

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And remember to ask questions of Jennifer Deane on Beguines in the comments section of her post, Beguine Communities and Medieval History from last Thursday, the 5th.