Fire to Light Our Tongues

A Fire to Light Our Tongues: Texas Writers on Spirituality brings together the works of writers in Texas. The title is taken, with permission, from Naomi Shihab Nye’s introduction to Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets, where she states the role of poetry serves as “a fire to light our tongues.” This view describes the role that creative writers, encountering the challenges of this past decade, face as they grapple with shifting views of spirituality. While the project started before COVID-19, given the current worldwide pandemic, a book of creative work responding to writers’ spirituality could not be more timely. This anthology offers readers creative works by Texas writers as they wrestle with evolving systems of belief or nonbelief.