Current writing project(s)

Novel

I am working on my first novel ​about medieval writer Marguerite Porete.

 
It is the story about a courageous woman with a passion to communicate her vision of freedom, even though women are prohibited from teaching publicly and writing books. Arrested in 1308 on suspicion of heresy by the Inquisition for crossing these strict boundaries, her fate is linked to that of the Templars.
 

My novel recreates the story of her life through her own eyes as she languishes in prison. Against the backdrop of Louis IX's crusades, civil war, Philippe le Bel's attack on the Templar Order and the Jewish people,  and the controversial religious movement of the beguines, Marguerite lays bare the turmoil and tragedies of her life and loves. 

 
While it is a fictional account, my story suggests how she might have come upon the spiritual truths of which she wrote in her book The Mirror of Simple Souls​. The book survived anonymously throughout the centuries, and it was only discovered in 1946 that the actual author of this subtle work was none other than Marguerite Porete.

 

Novella: The Persimmon Tree

 

I began to write a contemporary short story about a woman who is struggling to grieve because she was not with her mother when she died.  

Taking a holiday away from it all in a neglected old vineyard in France, she becomes involved in the relationship between the owner and her estranged daughter. The more she delves, however, the more she realises that nothing is quite as it seems. 

 

The story is lengthening as I write, and is likely to become a short novel or novella.

What's New

Magazine article

'Is there a vaccuum of theological diagnosis in church responses to sexual abuse?'

in CITYtheology

Winter 2022/32

(link to talk)

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© Susan Shooter