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In WHOLENESS, a Wising Up Anthology, forty-eight talented writers of different ages, countries, ethnicities, and religions explore the experience of wholeness and its impact on our lives through poetry, fiction, memoir, non-fiction, and image.Wholeness is an emergent phenomena, real as life, breath, consciousness-and, like them, can't be explained or predicted by its component parts. It's that something more that heals and reveals possibilities we could not see before. It can hold opposites, reconcile what seems completely incompatible. It can change what follows in ways we never imagined. When and where have we experienced a sense of wholeness? How did we recognize it? How did it shift our ways of being in ourselves, with each other, and with what lies beyond? Can it be described? Shared? Does it require a sense of wonder-or create it?

The broad range of characters in William Cass's moving second short story collection, Uncommon & Other Stories, all share a fascination with right action-how we know it, when we know it, and what that knowledge asks of us-in real time or in retrospect. Cass's stories are deeply rooted in the particularities of daily life and of nature-whether how to run a small inn in Arizona, harvest hay in Montana, mend an old woman's decaying picket fence, feed oneself through a stomach tube, teach an abandoned child how to garden, rob your neighbors' vacation homes. Even in regret, there is a bracing affirmation, however delayed, that other choices were possible, and that we are graced by this knowledge, however uncomfortable it may also be. As one narrator explains, "Now as I enter this final chapter of life, I'm struck at how much of it has been made up of encounters and events like those-many random and seemingly small, some involving choices or control and others not-and how their meaning remains mysterious, indelible, confounding, fervent."

David Breeden's moving and accessible collection of poetry, A Little Book of Living Through the Day: Poems During a Pandemic, was written to get himself through the isolation of the pandemic--and to reach others, like those in his congregation, struggling with the same burden of the day-after-day. He explains: "I wrote the poems collected here in order to make it through the day, the night, and the day-after-day of the pandemic. Days of worry. Days of confusion. Days of social unrest. Days of figuring out how to get through the days. The pandemic hit congregations hard-we could not do one of the most important things congregations do: gather together. I knew that each person was, like me, living with the day-after-day. What could be said to help us make it?"

In this Wising Up Anthology, fifty writers explore-with zest, angst, humor, humility, anger, and love-through stories, poems, memoirs and creative non-fiction, our constantly changing and, hopefully, maturing relationships with those we raised and those who raised us.

Written over the last forty years, these five plays by Toni Press-Coffman remain relevant to current social divides. They explore the nature of American idealism-how it is tested, lost or tempered, what saving graces come to take its place.

These intimate and accessible poems move from public events to personal ones, explore creativity, age, marriage, early trauma, motherhood, family relationships, and travel, teaching us "we are never too old for rebirth, the hold of the miraculous."

Created to encourage expanding conversations about our common good, GOODNESS, A Wising Up Anthology explores the impact of goodness in our lives: who has embodied it for us, where we have seen it in action, and how it has changed us.

RE-CREATING OUR COMMON CHORD A Wising Up AnthologyWith the intense polarization in our society these days, the volume and vitriol so high on all sides, how do we live out our commitment to the existentially equal value of those around us when we ourselves feel deeply devalued, feel our definition of the common good is unheard or denied? What do we do with our strong responses to the threat that devaluation poses-a threat our bodies and our hearts recognize even faster than our minds? Under threat we all become more authoritarian, impulsive, suspicious, unkind-and frightened, discouraged, and unforgiving. It's so quick, like a switch. An alternate reality. None of us are exempt. But we do have the beginning of the answer if we can slow down, step back, listen. That beginning is US, just as much as the polarization is. Its essence is a presumption of good faith. And a never-ending practice of discovering, rediscovering and creating our common good-a practice that depends heavily on our ability to see the good in each other, however different we are. Really see it, lift it up, and do the same with our own. We're not saying this practice is easy, especially now. We are saying it's crucial-and rewarding. It is also small, specific, one person, one relationship, at a time. Thirty-seven contemporary writers share here, through memoir, fiction, poetry, and essay, their own experiences with discovering, creating, or re-creating our common chord across nationality, class, criminal justice, religion, race, politics, family, community. Come join us . . . CONTRIBUTORS: Thomas Abakah, Eve Mills Allen, David Arango-Dimitrijevic, Donna Banta, Patricia Barone, Charles D. Brockett, Judy Catterton, Bonni Chalkin, Susan K. Chernilo, Maryah Converse, Eleanor Ellis, S. J. Engstrom, Elizabeth Brulé Farrell, Judith Gille, Stephanie Hart, J. O. Haselhoef, Sharon Hilberer, Gaye D. Holman, Susan Martell Huebner, Daniel M. Jaffe, Mimi Jennings, Murali Kamma, Laurie Klein, Lori Levy, Chuck Madansky, Beth McKim, Monica Mische, Sharon Lask Munson, Marianne Peel, Ada Jill Schneider, Patty Somlo, J.J. Steinfeld, Kelly Talbot, Lucia Talenti, Heather Tosteson, Loretta Diane Walker, Tyree Wilson

In Green Card and Other Essays, Áine Greaney invites her readers to follow her three-decades' long journey from Irish citizen and resident to new immigrant and green card holder to dual citizenship that now includes naturalized U.S. citizenship. These first-person essays offer an intimate perspective on the challenges-fear, displacement, assimilation and dueling identities-faced by many immigrants from all countries. They explore what inspires us to commit to a new country-and what holds us back. As a collection, Green Card exemplifies the power of storytelling to build bridges of understanding and a deeper joy in our shared humanity.

The stories in this debut collection explore experiences of first generation Indian immigrants in the U.S. Kamma's characters deal with conflict, growth, dislocation, and renewal in a new world. Their old world is also present, and this "in-betweenness" shapes their lives. Once immigration involved leaving all behind, assuming a new identity with your new culture. Now we move back and forth-between continents, cities, our different mores no longer tidily compartmentalized, sometimes more migrant than immigrant. Generational splits in families mirror and amplify the gulf between new and old. A father steps off a train at a station and disappears for a son's entire childhood; an emigrant son returning for a visit easily falls in with his father's delusion that he is a servant. A couple safely ensconced in their new American life face the costs of their choices when those they left behind come to visit. Divisions within a nation, whether of caste or class, can be more striking than differences between countries. Returning to India, characters revisit choices they or their parents made with radically different sensibilities and assumptions now in play. What seemed shocking, inevitable, or impossible then, may feel inconsequential, arbitrary, or heroic now. Like his characters, the author is an acute observer-and diffident interpreter-of a much larger world that will never feel fully familiar again.Most of us in this country came originally from different places-geographically, socially, and spiritually. While bodies can be easily transported, it takes longer for uprooted spirits to engage the new territory. . . . Murali Kamma engages the past and present dimensions of that struggle, illuminating, along the way, what it means to be Indian, American, and truly human.Roderick Clark, Editor/Publisher, Rosebud magazineFrom the first paragraph, the very first sentence, Murali Kamma had me engrossed and engaged in the narrative, and my interest did not diminish until I got to end of the book, twenty stories in all, to its very last sentence.Waqas Khwaja, Ellen Douglass Leyburn Professor of English, Agnes Scott College, author of Hold Your Breath and No One Waits for the TrainIn this exciting and moving debut collection, Murali Kamma explores the immigrant condition with compassion and candor. Readers, no matter what their background, will relate to these characters who are part Indian, part American, and wholly human. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of Before We Visit the Goddess and The Forest of Enchantments A collection of powerful stories that opens up a larger world for the reader.The haunting quality and the emotional punch they deliver linger in the mind. This is a writer to watch.Bharti Kirchner, author of Darjeeling, Goddess of Fire, and Season of Sacrifice

SURPRISED BY JOY, A Wising Up Anthology Editors: Charles D. Brockett and Heather TostesonJOY. It's out of our control-unpredictable, illogical, transitory, all-consuming. It can shatter our most basic assumptions. It can heal. It isn't an idea. It is far more than a body state. It can come to us at the strangest times-in the depths of despair or the height of frustration, when we're most lonely or when we're most fully embraced, or just absently mindedly staring off into space. It is transforming, but it does not take us out of ourselves or our situations. It is, in itself, an answer that gives birth to very different questions, ones we may not have known how to ask-about the real, but unpredictable, good in us and the world around us. But it is easy in times of tumult and anger to forget that this experience of joy-and what flows from it-may be more lasting than our outrage. In this anthology forty-three contemporary writers help us explore, through fiction, poetry, and memoir, how experiences of joy help shape us and our relationship with the world around us. CONTRIBUTORS: Patricia Barone, Zan Bockes, Lauren K Carlson, Joe Cottonwood, Susan Cowger, Margaret DeRitter, Joan Dobbie, Terri Elders, Jennifer L. Freed, Andrew Paul Grell, Patrick Cabello Hansel, Andrea Hansell, Linda Hansell, J.O. Haselhoef, Margaret Hasse, Lowell Jaeger, Daniel M. Jaffe, Laurie Klein, Kerry Langan, Lori Levy, Charissa Menefee, Felicia Mitchell, Kristin Bryant Rajan, Zack Rogow, Mary Kay Rummel, Frank Salvidio, Terry Sanville, Jan Sarchio, Deborah A. Schmedemann, Pegi Deitz Shea, Ruth Margolin Silin, Laurence Snydal, J. J. Steinfeld, Alison Stone, Kelly Talbot, Mark Tarallo, Don Thackrey, Heather Tosteson, Claudia Van Gerven, Rosemary Volz, Ken Wise, Weihua Zhang, Jana Zvibleman

CROSSING CLASS: The Invisible Wall. A Wising Up Anthology. Editors: Charles D. Brockett and Heather Tosteson. CLASS: It's the great unspeakable in a society dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal, with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that believes in the redistributive power of personal ambition, hard work, self-intention and self-definition. It might be the most powerful and intractable of social divisions, its effects potent even within culture, race, or gender. Whether we buy in consciously or not, we are all subject to the shaping power of class. But what exactly does it mean to be shaped by class? How does this shaping affect what we long for, strive for, believe is possible-not just for us but for those around us and the world at large? What happens to our understanding of class, of our society and of ourselves, when we cross class boundaries upwards ordownwards, willingly or unwillingly, through education, employment, marriage, divorce, friendships and other meaningful relationships, immigration or emigration, illness, economic or political upheaval? How does our experience of class mobility, wanted or unwanted, change our understanding of ourselves, our social relationships, our sense of social agency, our sense of our society? How does it change our understanding of the possibilities and challenges of living out E Pluribus Unum? Thirty contemporary writers help us explore the impact of class and inequality through fiction, memoir, poetry-and some graphs. CONTRIBUTORS:Danisa Bell, Maida Berenblatt, Sarah Bigham, J. Andrew Briseño, Charles D. Brockett, Elizabeth Burton, Marian Mathews Clark, Gillian Esquivia Cohen, Susan G. Duncan, Katherin Hervey, Lowell Jaeger, Daniel M. Jaffe, Murali Kamma, Judith J. Katz, John Laue, Michele Markarian, Nancy L. Meyer, Carl Palmer, Mark Pawlak, Patricia Smith Ranzoni, Mary Kay Rummel, Ada Jill Schneider, Patty Somlo, Jane St. Clair, Robert Stinson, Heather Tosteson, Donald R. Vogel, Mark D. Walker, Ken Williams, Andrena Zawinski

What is repair in relationships? It's not starting anew. It's not jumping ship. It's not settling, either. It takes as many forms as there are relationships. It's difficult. It matters. It takes both sides to do it-and we do it all the time, in large and small ways. So why don't we like to talk about it? Why do we tend to think of it as a failure rather than a source of resilience, like the constant re-equilibrations of balance that allow us to walk, dance, break bread and move mountains? In this intriguing anthology of poetry, memoir, and story, forty-four talented writers ages twenty to eighty explore repair in many forms: between adults and their parents, parents and their children, in romantic relationships, marriage, divorce, bereavement because of the death of a parent, spouse, or grandchild, and in relationship to broader social conditions as well, like poverty, addiction, racism, war, physical differences, disease. With humor, grief, wit, tenderness, honesty, kindness, anger and hope, they invite us to explore-and celebrate-what it takes for all of us to stay connected. This is a book you can find yourself in. This is a book you can share-with a brother, a long lost friend or one you talk with daily, a parent, a child, a colleague, a spouse-and learn something new about them and yourself, growing closer in the process. Contributors: Patricia Barone, Bari Benjamin, Wendy Brown-Báez, Caitlin Buckley, Rose Burke, Susan Kay Chernilo, Arhm Choi, Marian Mathews Clark, Willy Conley, Terry Cox-Joseph, Bill Denham, Martha Gies, Judith Goedeke, Janet Lunder Hanafin, R.E. Hayes, William Henderson, Paul Hostovsky, Beth Lefebvre, Russ Allison Loar, Michele Markarian, Diane Mierzwik, Caridad Moro, Tim Myers, Wendy Jones Nakanishi, Eve Mills Allen, Sophia J. Nolan, Jim Pahz, Rachel Raimondi, Melanie Reitzel, Lori Rottenberg, Mary Kay Rummel, Adrienne Ross Scanlan, Evelyn Sharenov, Isabelle Bruder Smith, Thomas J. Stevenson, Elizabeth Swann, Elaine J. Taber, Don Thackrey, Heather Tosteson, Carol Tufts, Georgann Turner, Marta Tveit, Andy Weatherwax, Mary Wheeler, Weihua Zhang.