"Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." -Exodus 3:5 "The Holy Land is everywhere." -Black Elk The two epigraphs that preface Angela Alaimo O'Donnell's Holy Land introduce the reader to the central theme that permeates her poems: that holy places deserve to be regarded with reverence and that all places are holy places. In her afterward, the poet traces these foundational concepts to her Catholic childhood wherein religious instruction consisted largely of memorizing the Baltimore Catechism. "One of questions the Catechism poses is 'Where is God?' The answer is 'God is everywhere.' We believed this to be true. God was in church, but God was also in our house (a crucifix in every room), in the backyard, in our Buick (rosary beads swinging from the rearview mirror), at our birthday parties in the basement, and in our own bodies. And though those places may not sound very holy, they were. Because God was there. Is there." In addition to affirming this foundational belief, these poems extend the terrain, moving beyond the geographical and the physical to the temporal, the carnal, the intellectual, and the spiritual realms. They assert that our days are blessed, our bodies are blessed, our minds and souls are all blessed and sacred ground. The poet explores a broad spectrum of physical locations, beginning with poems set in the Holy Land and moving on to places closer to home, ranging from the west of Ireland to rural Minnesota, from New York City to the Texas border. She also probes the temporal spaces we occupy, experiences of death and birth, love and loss, desire and desolation that mark our human passage. The English word holy is related to the Germanic word heilig, a word that means blessed and also carries within it the idea of wholeness. Holy Land attempts to honor both the holiness and the wholeness of our world-from Gotham to Golgotha, the Bronx River to the Sea of Galilee-and to honor the holiness and wholeness of our blessed and broken humanity.

Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O'Connor is a collection of 101 sonnets that channel the voice of celebrated fiction writer, Flannery O'Connor. In these poems, poet and scholar Angela Alaimo O'Donnell imagines the rich interior life Flannery lived during the last fourteen years of her life in rural Georgia on her family's farm named "Andalusia." Each poem begins with an epigraph taken from O'Connor's essays, stories, or letters; the poet then plumbs Flannery's thoughts and the poignant circumstances behind them, welcoming the reader into O'Connor's private world. Together the poems tell the story of a brilliant young woman who enjoyed a bright and promising childhood, was struck with lupus just as her writing career hit its stride, and was forced to return home and live out her days in exile, far from the literary world she loved. By turns tragic and comic, the poems in Andalusian Hours explore Flannery's loves and losses, her complex relationship with her mother, her battle with her illness and disability, and her passion for her writing. The poems mark time in keeping with the liturgical hours O'Connor herself honored in her prayer life and in her quasi-monastic devotion to her vocation and to the home she learned to love, Andalusia.

Radical Ambivalence is the first book-length study of Flannery O'Connor's attitude toward race in her fiction and correspondence. It is also the first study to include controversial material from unpublished letters that reveals the complex and troubling nature of O'Connor's thoughts on the subject. O'Connor lived and did most of her writing in her native Georgia during the tumultuous years of the civil rights movement. In one of her letters, O'Connor frankly expresses her double-mindedness regarding the social and political upheaval taking place in the United States with regard to race: "I hope that to be of two minds about some things is not to be neutral." Radical Ambivalence explores this double-mindedness and how it manifests itself in O'Connor's fiction.

Radical Ambivalence is the first book-length study of Flannery O'Connor's attitude toward race in her fiction and correspondence. It is also the first study to include controversial material from unpublished letters that reveals the complex and troubling nature of O'Connor's thoughts on the subject. O'Connor lived and did most of her writing in her native Georgia during the tumultuous years of the civil rights movement. In one of her letters, O'Connor frankly expresses her double-mindedness regarding the social and political upheaval taking place in the United States with regard to race: "I hope that to be of two minds about some things is not to be neutral." Radical Ambivalence explores this double-mindedness and how it manifests itself in O'Connor's fiction.

"Like a beautiful quilt, "Province of Joy" is a deeply loving, imaginative work of art and faith." - Elizabeth A. Johnson This unique "Book of Hours" is modeled on the spiritual life and prayer practices of one of our most interesting writers.
"Flannery O'Connor's stories help us see grace in the most difficult of circumstances. O'Donnell artfully combines selections from her writings with daily prayers and readings for something wonderful: a prayer book that is old and new, timely and timeless, comforting and provocative."
- James Martin, SJ, author of "Between Heaven and Mirth"