Welcome to Phyllis Barber's website (and, by the way, the above quote is in response to How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir, which was cited in 2012 by TheBrowser.com as one of the top five books written about Las Vegas).
Upcoming Events:
Barber will be teaching a weekend intensive, "How to Write a 3-D Memoir," at the Lighthouse Writers Literary Festival in Denver, Colorado, on June 8 and 9. For further information, go to lighthousewriters.org.
Latest News:
***PARTING THE MORMON VEIL: PHYLLIS BARBER'S WRITING, by Angel Chaparro Sainz (Spain: University of Valencia Press, Biblioteca Javier Coy d’estudis nord-americans) has recently been released.
***Barber's newest book, Gentle Fire: A Spiritual Odyssey, a collection of personal essays with a narrative arc, will be forthcoming in May, 2014, from Quest Books. It is the story of the author's twenty-year hiatus from Mormonism and her visits with shamans in Peru and Ecuador; Tibetan Buddhist monks in North India and Tibet; a variety of Baptist congregations in Arkansas, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina; megachurches; charismatic Christian congregations, travels with godddess worshipers in the Yucatan, and much more. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate how Spirit can be found in many places among many diverse seekers. Not only can we tolerate other ideas in the spiritual realm, but we can learn from their wisdom.
And yes, those other details:
Phyllis Barber, a native of Nevada and now a resident of Denver, Colorado, writes about the West, the desert, the Mormons who played a significant role in settling the West and creating the person she's become, and about matters of the spirit with its familiar and unfamiliar reaches. She's dedicated to a face-to-face writing style inspired by her commitment to being honestly alive, by accepting the reality of "what is," and by speaking her truth as she understands it. A risk-taking writer, she writes frankly and unblinkingly about the jagged, unpredictable edges of things. She is also a consummate artist with the written word.
For over thirty five years, she's been writing award-winning stories, articles, essays, and books, in addition to being the mother of four sons, teaching fiction and creative nonfiction in the MFA in Writing Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts (from which she recently retired), riding her bicycle 1,000 miles across the Midwest, traveling the world, reading across a wide spectrum of books, serving as a community volunteer, playing the piano professionally, and accompanying a diverse variety of musicians. In 2005, she was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.
Her latest book, Raw Edges: A Memoir, was released by the University of Nevada Press in March of 2010, and was listed as one of the Outstanding University Press Books of 2010 by Foreword Reviews' print magazine. Her hope is that the book will be useful to those who've traveled the sometimes difficult path through marriage, divorce, and coming to terms with one's unexpected self. The book is now available in paperback and on Amazon Kindle.
Book reviews can be found in the "Books" section.