The Accidental Pilgrim: Finding God and His Mother in Tuscany

A native Nebraskan, Judith Sornberger lives in the Appalachian mountains of northcentral Pennsylvania where her nearest neighbors are deer, bears, coyotes, and bobcats. Sornberger is the author of one full-length poetry collection, Open Heart (Calyx Books), and five chapbooks, most recently Wal-Mart Orchid, winner of the 2012 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize. The Hard Grammar of Gratitude won the 2010 Tennessee Chapbook Competition. Her other three chapbooks are: Judith Beheading Holofernes (winner of the Talent House Press chapbook contest), Bifocals Barbie: A Midlife Pantheon (Talent House Press), and Bones of Light (Parallel Press). Sornberger's poems and essays have appeared in such journals as Cimarron Review, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Pilgrimage, Calyx, Feminist Studies, Tiferet, The Comstock Review, Prairie Schooner, and Ekphrasis, and in anthologies such as Claiming the Spirit Within (Beacon Press), Out of Line (Longmire), and Breaking Free: Women of Spirit at Midlife and Beyond (Beacon Press). Sornberger has taught creative writing in many venues. Her first teaching job was at the Nebraska State Penitentiary and the Lincoln Correctional Center. She recently retired from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania after twenty-five years teaching writing; she also created the Women’s Studies Program and served as its director. The mother of adult twin sons, Sornberger lives with her Shih-Tzu, Brigit, and her bear-chasing cat, Billy Bob.