Wright, Vinita Hampton 1958–

views updated

Wright, Vinita Hampton 1958–

PERSONAL:

Born 1958, in CA; married Jim Wright (photographer and graphic designer), 1991; children: Nathan, Josh (stepsons). Education: Pittsburg State University, B.A., 1982; Wheaton College, M.A., 1992. Hobbies and other interests: Walking around the city, watching films, cooking.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Chicago, IL. Office—Loyola Press, 3441 North Ashland Ave., Chicago, IL 60657. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, editor, and workshop facilitator. Worked as a music teacher in Jordan and the Missouri public school system, 1982-88; Harold Shaw Publishers, editor; Tyndale House, editor; Loyola Press, Chicago, IL, editorial director of trade books division, senior book editor. Conducts the workshop "The Soul Tells a Story across the Country."

WRITINGS:

NOVELS AND NOVELLAS

Grace at Bender Springs: A Novel, Broadman & Holman (Nashville, TN), 1999.

Velma Still Cooks in Leeway, Broadman & Holman (Nashville, TN), 2000.

The Winter Seeking: A Novella, WaterBrook Press (Colorado Springs, CO), 2003.

Dwelling Places: A Novel, HarperSanFrancisco (New York, NY), 2006.

EDITOR AND COMPILER

(Compiler, with Carol Plueddemann) World Shapers: A Treasury of Quotes from Great Missionaries, H. Shaw Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1991.

(Compiler, with Carol Plueddemann) Prayers around the Family Table: Dinner-time Discussion and Prayer, H. Shaw Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1992, reprinted, Testament Books (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor) Prayers across the Centuries: Abraham, Jesus, St. Augustine, Martin Luther, Susanna Wesley, H. Shaw Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1993.

(Compiler, with Mary Horner) Women's Wisdom through the Ages: Timeless Quotations on Life and Faith, Testament Books (New York, NY), 1994, reprinted, Testament Books (New York, NY), 2002.

(Compiler, with Carol Plueddemann) Family Prayers for All Occasions, H. Shaw Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1995.

(Compiler, with Keith Call) A Dickens Christmas Collection, H. Shaw Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1995.

(Editor, with Melissa R. Cox and Lisa A. Jackson) Paul C. Reisser, Parents' Guide to Teen Health: Raising Physically & Emotionally Healthy Teens, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 2001.

OTHER

Simple Acts of Moving Forward: A Little Book about Getting Unstuck (nonfiction), Shaw Books (Colorado Springs, CO), 2003.

The Soul Tells a Story: Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life (nonfiction), Inter-Varsity Press (Downers Grove, IL), 2005.

2005: A Book of Grace-filled Days, Loyola Press (Chicago, IL), 2005.

2006: A Book of Grace-filled Days, Loyola Press (Chicago, IL), 2005.

A Catalogue of Angels: The Heavenly, the Fallen, and the Holy Ones among Us (nonfiction), Paraclete Press (Brewster, MA), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Born in California and raised in a small town in Kansas, Vinita Hampton Wright was intending to pursue a career in music education and performance when she traveled in her early twenties to Jordan to teach English and music in a Baptist school and "to see what God looked like once I got [out] of America," said Wright in an interview conducted by Publishers Weekly's Jana Riess. While she was working there, however, she realized that she wanted to become a writer.

Inspired to write a story about grace after viewing the film Miss Firecracker, Wright sat down and began Grace at Bender Springs, which also drew from the experiences of her youth in Kansas. Although the initial Christian publishing house halted publication of the novel at the eleventh hour, within the following year Wright had landed an agent and a three-book contract with another Christian publisher, Broadman & Holman.

Wright honed what was originally a collection of short stories into a novel. Grace at Bender Springs: A Novel uses the metaphor of a drought to explore a community's "spiritual dryness." In his Booklist review, John Mort noted that "seldom is Christian fiction so well informed and potent" as Wright's novel. Called "cross-over" fiction, Grace at Bender Springs has appealed to a broad audience. Reviewing Grace at Bender Springs in Publishers Weekly, Riess called the book "a deeply resonant novel about healing."

According to Christianity Today interviewer Lauren F. Winner, Wright's second novel, Velma Still Cooks in Leeway, "also tackles a theological theme, this time forgiveness." The narrator is Velma, a short-order cook at her own restaurant. Again the story unfolds through a series of points of view. In a review for Booklist, Mort considered Wright's story of an aging widow in a town in need of forgiveness "a worthy successor to her fine debut novel." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly described Velma Still Cooks in Leeway as "a cosmic drama of divine grace" and "an extraordinary, character-driven novel."

Riess asked Wright in her interview with her whether her novels "fill a need in the world of Christian fiction." Wright responded: "What I want to do is present real Christians in my books. I think these people are worth knowing and they're worth knowing, just the way they are. They're learning things about themselves and other people, and they're learning how faith works and who God is in ever-changing situations." Riess noted that Velma Still Cooks in Leeway "is driven … by the quiet dignity of ordinary people weathering extraordinary trials." In Wright's own observation: "Spirituality is just very interesting, and I love exploring that with characters. A character without that spiritual dynamic is just as flat as a character without a sexual dynamic."

Like the three Christian fiction books Wright penned before Dwelling Places: A Novel, this book deals with gritty subject matter in which real Christians deal with real problems. The book "eschews the traditional marriage plot, in which anxious courtship moves the novel forward and everything comes to a happy conclusion when the protagonists tie the knot. Dwelling Places is a story of what happens after—way after—the wedding day," as Winner put it in an article for Books & Culture.

The novel revolves around the Barnes family, all of whom fall apart in their own way after forty-three-year-old Mack Barnes suffers a breakdown due to depression over losing his father, his brother, and the majority of his farmland in Beulah, Iowa, where he and his family before him farmed for generations. When Mack returns home from being hospitalized for his depression a few weeks later, he has to contend with the harsh reality of a bitter wife, Jodie, who can't seem to reconnect with him, and eventually seeks comfort in the arms of one of her coworkers. He also comes home to two teenage children who are coping with the family breakdown in their own extreme ways: one becomes a Goth, while the other turns to fundamentalist Christianity. Meanwhile, Rita, Mack's widowed mother and the local do-gooder, attempts to bring her family back together.

A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted that Dwelling Places trades in the traditional Christian fiction plot with its predictable trajectory and happy ending for an "authentic portrait of people who do not completely regret their mistakes and are still learning how to accept God's consolation." According to Cindy Crosby in her review of the novel for Christianity Today, "Wright's characters are as multilayered as a torte, the dialogue smooth and uncluttered." In his review of the book for the Web site Curled Up with a Good Book, Michael Leonard wrote that "Wright's prose is subtle and intuitive as she progressively probes the details of her characters's domestic lives along with exposing the traditions of small-town farms that are steadily evaporating with the onset of modern life."

On top of Wright's Christian fiction, she has authored a few nonfiction books as well. The Soul Tells a Story: Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life, which a Publishers Weekly reviewer called a "a marvel- ous resource," grew out of her workshop by the same name, which is based on her experiences as an editor and fiction writer. The book looks at the ways spirituality nurtures creativity, and vice versa. Another nonfiction work, A Catalogue of Angels: The Heavenly, the Fallen, and the Holy Ones among Us, is described by a Publishers Weekly critic as being a "combination of angelic history and encyclopedia." In the book, Wright, who believes in angels, investigates their prevalence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

One of Wright's challenges is finding enough time to write. She told Riess that she "takes two weeks of paid and two weeks of unpaid vacation each year to write full-time." The remainder of the year she works part time as an editor of nonfiction at Loyola Press and makes room for writing time during evenings and weekends.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 1, 1999, John Mort, review of Grace at Bender Springs: A Novel, p. 326; October 1, 2000, John Mort, review of Velma Still Cooks in Leeway, p. 304; January 1, 2006, John Mort, review of Dwelling Places: A Novel, p. 59; September 1, 2006, June Sawyers, review of A Catalogue of Angels: A Guide to the Heavenly, the Fallen, and the Holy Ones among Us, p. 26.

Books, May 6, 2007, review of Dwelling Places, p. 9.

Books & Culture, March 1, 2006, Winner, Lauren F., "Trouble in the Heartland," p. 29.

Christian Century, December 12, 2006, review of Dwelling Places, p. 23.

Christianity Today, April 23, 2001, Lauren F. Winner, "The Wright Stuff," p. 84; April 1, 2006, Cindy Crosby, review of Dwelling Places, p. 105.

Entertainment Weekly, February 10, 2006, Karen Karbo, review of Dwelling Places, p. 141.

Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2005, review of Dwelling Places, p. 1107.

Library Journal, September 15, 2006, Nancy Almand, review of A Catalogue of Angels, p. 66.

Publishers Weekly, August 30, 1999, Jana Riess, review of Grace at Bender Springs, p. S15; July 24, 2000, review of Velma Still Cooks in Leeway, p. 66; September 18, 2000, Jana Riess, "Vinita Hampton Wright: A Life of Quiet Grace," p. 82; September 22, 2003, review of The Winter Seeking: A Novella, p. 77; April 11, 2005, review of The Soul Tells a Story: Engaging Creativity with Spirituality in the Writing Life, p. 50; October 17, 2005, review of Dwelling Places, p. 40; May 29, 2006, review of A Catalogue of Angels, p. 54.

Today's Christian Woman, November 1, 2004, review of The Winter Seeking, p. 84.