The Spiritual Essence of Storytelling

As part of the third American Writers Festival, which takes place all day on Saturday, June 7, CLHOF has put together an outstanding group of thinkers to reflect on the idea of spirituality in their life and work. 

What is the difference between spiritual and religious? And how does that manifest itself in certain works of literature? In either case, a higher power, or a higher something, is implied, as too is the idea that becoming a better self is a perpetual aspiration. Spiritual threads run through the work of Catherine-Esther Cowie, Runako Jahi, Aviya Kushner, and Tom Montgomery Fate. These three authors will explore their sense of spirituality’s meaning and their thoughts on its importance in literature, specifically their own. 

Catherine-Esther Cowie was born in St. Lucia to a Trinidadian father and a St. Lucian mother. She migrated with her family to Canada and then to the USA. Her debut poetry collection is Heirloom (Carcanet Press, 2025) which was shortlisted for a Forward Poetry Prize,  the T.S. Eliot Prize and 2026 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Her poems have been published in PN Review, Prairie Schooner, West Branch Journal, The Common, SWWIM, Rhino Poetry and others.  She lives in Illinois, USA.

Tom Montgomery Fate is a retired English professor and the author of six books of creative nonfiction, including The Long Way Home, a travel memoir, Cabin Fever, a nature memoir, and Steady and Trembling, a spiritual memoir. A regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune, his essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Orion, The Iowa Review, and many others. Dozens of his essays have also aired on NPR and Chicago Public Radio.

Runako Jahi is a playwright, poet, actor, theater director, former Artistic Director of ETA Creative Arts Foundation, and is currently Jennifer Hudson's acting coach.  To date, they have worked on twelve film projects together, including 'Dreamgirls'. Spirituality is an important element that determines the essence of human character in ways that can be viewed as both positive and negative.  There are people who use their 'spirituality' as a mask, or coverup to APPEAR to be RIGHTEOUS, good-natured, or forgiving.  When in truth, their mindset is racist, hateful, hellbent on chaos within American culture, displaying not an OUNCE of love and compassion for the very people who elected them.  My approach to the Arts is to explore CHARACTER in the most human way possible, by revealing the SOUL beneath the LIES.

Aviya Kushner has worked as a travel columnist for The International Jerusalem Post, and her poems and essays have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, Partisan Review, and The Wilson Quarterly. She teaches at Columbia College Chicago and is a contributing editor at A Public Space and a mentor for the National Yiddish Book Center.