Just wanted to update everyone on our upcoming events since we’ve just added some new information online:

Summer Seminars in Residence at The Kilns

Don’t miss this extraordinary opportunity to explore the life and works of C.S. Lewis with a small group of fellow travelers while residing in C.S. Lewis’ beloved home, The Kilns!

Join us for a week of learning, fellowship, and renewal in the world renowned “City of the Dreaming Spires”– Oxford, England.  Study with a noted Lewis scholar, who will lead you in an engaging exploration of the essential themes of Lewis’ writings and life. Experience the pleasures of new friendships, fine dining, and warm hospitality as you find respite from the hectic pace of modern day life. Whether enjoying the many cultural treasures of Oxford, venturing on a guided tour of the city of Cambridge, punting on the Cam, or having tea in the garden with your companions, you will find your stay at The Kilns to be one of life’s rare treasures.

For the Summer Seminars, we’ve just added a new program for Week III:

Week III ~ August 1-7, 2009:
Lewis Remembered: Visits with Friends of C.S. Lewis
With Walter Hooper, Laurence Harwood and Kim Gilnett

What was it like to know C.S. Lewis as a friend? A stepfather? A benefactor? Meet with those who knew him best as family and friends of Jack Lewis reminisce about a man of integrity, scholarship, and humor. Gain an insider’s glimpse into formative influences on Lewis’ life. Consider how he integrated his Christian faith with work and personal pursuits. Beginning with a biography of Lewis’ life and conversion, each day’s discussion will introduce you to another of Lewis’ closest contemporaries.

Special Guests: Aidan Mackey, Barbara Reynolds and Simon Barrington Ward *

* Speakers and special guests are subject to confirmation.

C.S. Lewis Southwest Regional Retreat - We’ve just launched the official website and added the schedule information.

From the early 1930s to the late 1940s, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and a community of their friends and fellow writers met frequently to share good fellowship and their creative works-in-progress.  Members of this small writers group, the “Inklings,” came to produce some of the most beloved works of fiction and prose of the twentieth century.

But how did the Inklings, many of them Christians working in skeptical secular environments, come to create such lasting contributions to literature and Christianity?  And what can we learn about Christian creativity, community, and fellowship from such a diverse group of writers and thinkers?

Join Diana Pavlac Glyer, author of The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community, as she invites us to discover their friendship and the influence it had on their lives, their works, and their relationships with God.

In the intimate woodland setting of the Camp Allen Conference Center, be refreshed by Ad Deum Dance Company and the music of Kemper Crabb. Explore the theme in breakout sessions with Joel Heck, George Musacchio, Andrew Lazo and Don Wood. Worship with Rev. Skip Ryan and Rev. Scott Irwin. And engage in stimulating discussion and fellowship with other conferees.

The C.S. Lewis Southwest Regional Retreat will renew your spirit, challenge your mind, and refresh your body!

DON’T MISS THIS YEAR’S SPECIAL PROGRAMS!

Writer’s Workshop

In the spirit of Lewis & Tolkien, we are also offering a special preconference Writers Workshop that will continue throughout the retreat.  Featuring author Joy Jordan-Lake, agent Steve Laube, and editor Terry Glaspey, the workshop will center on the theme More Than a Hobby: Letting Community Take Your Creativity to a New Level. To meet the needs of writers of varying areas of interest, there will be two tracks – one for fiction writers led by Joy Jordan-Lake, and one for nonfiction writers (focusing on devotionals, journals, memoirs, family histories, and church projects) led by Frank Ball.

Children’s Track

This year will also see the return of our popular children’s program, “Sailing Aboard the Dawn Treader: Learning from Lucy, Edmund, and Eustace,” which offers kids (ages 7-12) the opportunity to connect with Lewis at their level through reading aloud, discussing, acting, singing, hiking, arts & crafts and much more.

Tags: Ad Deum Dance Company, Andrew Lazo, C.S. Lewis, Camp Allen, Chronicles of Narnia, Diana Glyer, Don Wood, Frank Ball, George Musacchio, Joel Heck, Joy Jordan-Lake, Kemper Crabb, Kim Gilnett, Laurence Harwood, Narnia, Navasota, Oxford, Scott Irwin, Skip Ryan, Southwest Regional Retreat, Steve Laube, Summer Seminars, Terry Glaspey, Texas, The Kilns, The Kilns Study Centre, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Walter Hooper, Writers Workshop

The Magician's Book

Jordan Davis recently wrote a review of Laura Miller’s Magician’s Book in the May 25th edition of The Nation.

The review, titled “Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis’s Narnia,” has just been posted on line.  In it, Davis makes observations about C.S. Lewis, his writings, and Laura Miller’s book, most of them aimed at exploring Miller’s central question about how readers form strong, and even lifelong, connections to Lewis’ stories, especially Narnia.

Here are a two excerpts:

Born in 1898 to a Belfast solicitor and his mathematics-trained wife, C.S. Lewis, or Jack, as he preferred to be called, was deemed by his tutor for the Oxford entrance exams to have been “born with the literary temperament,” and “while admirably adapted for excellence and probably for distinction in literary matters, he is adapted for nothing else.” It was true. An admirer of Beatrix Potter, young Jack wrote talking-animal novels and came to have hopes of success as a poet. One thing got in the way: he was not a poet. And not, by the way, in the manner in which Ford Madox Ford wasn’t a poet–Ford in his poems lived up to his standard that poetry should be at least as well written as prose. Lewis talked down to himself in his poems; this is the fatal flaw in much of what we know as bad poetry…

…In his criticism and the Narnia books, Lewis puts a premium on lush physical description, going beyond sight and sound to emphasize smell, taste and touch whenever possible. And he has the knack for what Soviet critic Viktor Shklovsky called ostranenie, or “enstrangement”–presenting familiar objects, scenes, feelings or even religious beliefs in an unfamiliar light so that the reader can experience them as if for the first time. These are indispensable qualities of Lewis’s best work, but they do not in themselves explain the fervor with which young readers form lifelong attachments to his stories.

For the full article, please visit The Nation by clicking here.

Tags: C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, Jordan Davis, Laura Miller, literature, Narnia, The Magician's Book

I wanted to pass on this quick note since it just came to my attention:

Our friend Melanie Jeschke (and an alumnus of several Foundation conferences) has just released her fourth novel, Jillian Dare, this week.  For details, visit her website http://www.inklingsauthor.com.  To purchase the book on Amazon, which will benefit the C.S. Lewis Foundation with a percentage of the sale, please click here to go to Amazon.com

Steve Elmore
Director of Communications
C.S. Lewis Foundation

Tags: Jillian Dare, Melanie Jeschke

As a follow up to my previous post “Is There Anything Redeemable About Spam?” I want to share a news story I ran across today in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The article describes two brothers, college students, who are being indicted for a massive spam operation.  Apparently, they designed software to gather student e-mail addresses from “more than 2,000″ colleges across the United States.  Here’s an excerpt:

The spammers developed e-mail extracting programs that harvested more than eight million student e-mail addresses, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. They allegedly sold more than $4.1-million in products in at least 31 spam e-mail marketing campaigns, inflicting damage on the University of Missouri network in the process.

So, with some technical know how, but at very little cost to themselves, two college students allegedly earned themselves “more than $4.1-million”  4.1 million!  Again we see why spam exists - because it’s a form of marketing and sales that works, and very well at that.  It works because people buy the products and make it work.  So don’t think that spam is going away anytime soon.  With examples like this, I’d expect that some of the spammers are going to become more and more sophisticated as time goes on.

For the full article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, click here.

Steve Elmore
Director of Communications
C.S. Lewis Foundation

Tags: e-mail, spam, technology, University of Missouri