{"id":2530,"date":"2009-08-03T17:03:44","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T00:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=2530"},"modified":"2026-06-12T07:14:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T07:14:50","slug":"writing-room-a-week-with-lauren-winner-of-girl-woman-meets-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/writing-room-a-week-with-lauren-winner-of-girl-woman-meets-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Room: A Week With Lauren Winner \u2014 Of \u201cGirl (Woman) Meets God\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lauren<\/a>
Lauren Winner. Photo by BF Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

I posted this entry a couple years ago after a writing workshop week in Santa Fe with Lauren Winner. She’s a fascinating person. Very smart. — bfn<\/em><\/p>\n

OK, I’m a little late in posting today. But I have an excuse. I’m sleep deprived, on account of getting up so early all\u00a0last week\u00a0to spend\u00a0time with Lauren Winner, author of Girl Meets God<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A few months ago,\u00a0when I saw that Lauren would be leading a week-long workshop in\u00a0spiritual\u00a0writing\u00a0at\u00a0the Glen Workshop in Santa Fe\u00a0this summer — I wasted no time signing up.<\/p>\n

Girl Meets God<\/em>, a memoir, did well when it came out in 2002. So I thought, \u00a0it can’t hurt to spend some time with this young woman. She’s a good writer. She’s figured out how to tell an intimate story — her conversion from Judaism to Christianity — without getting all cheesy about it. And her book was a sales success. It would be fun hanging out for a week with this woman, I thought. And maybe I’d even learn something.<\/p>\n

It had a been a few years since I’d read Girl Meets God<\/em>, and I’d forgotten most of the details when I signed up. The title had stuck in my mind, however, so when I arrived at the Glen, I expected to meet a girl<\/em> —\u00a0 young and pretty, with\u00a0a stylish\u00a0head of hair\u00a0that\u00a0she’d toss\u00a0 breezily from time to time.\u00a0 A winsome , girlish, twenty- or thirty-something.<\/p>\n

Ha!<\/p>\n

Lauren Winner is anything but girlish. First of all, she’s a woman — she’d like that to be clear. She also has a tough,\u00a0incisive mind, which\u00a0she faithfully applied to the sixteen manuscripts our group had brought to Santa Fe.\u00a0Too, Lauren\u00a0is generous, kind and has a great sense of humor. So, yes, we all had a very good time.<\/p>\n

More about the Glen and Lauren’s other books in a later post.<\/p>\n

Girl Meets God<\/em>, by Lauren Winner, Random House paperback, $15.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s another post with More Thoughts<\/a> from\/to\/about Lauren. I’ll also be writing about Anne Lamott<\/a>; watch for those posts.<\/p>\n

In another post — John Shelby Spong talks about Christianity — Why Some of It is Bunk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren Winner, author of Girl Meets God, is anything but girlish. First of all, she’s a woman, not a girl — she’d like that to be clear. She also has a tough, incisive mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,50,52],"tags":[366,152,367,368,369],"class_list":["post-2530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-openers","category-on-writing-reading","category-the-writing-room","tag-girl-meets-god","tag-glen-workshop","tag-lauren-winner","tag-santa-fe","tag-spiritual-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52720,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2530\/revisions\/52720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}