Books by John Skinner

Everyone knows you don't talk about the elephant in the room. But, what if you are the elephant in the room? White Boys from Hell files a report on the position of the straight white male in current American culture, a position fraught with contradiction and confusion. It does so without resort to the diction of the academy, or any lens applied in detachment, but, rather: from the inside out. In poems that address relations between men and women, men and other men, and men and the larger world, notions such as "masculinity," and "toxic masculinity" are considered by the voice of poetry, which, in Robert Pinsky's use of the phrase, means "something quite literal and practical." Granted, these are the poems of one person (elephant?) only, but the voice is compelling, the vision clear-eyed, rending, and urgent.

What is prayer? How may we approach our Maker in a simple, direct way?In listening to the Silence within. For if once we begin to attend to our deeper Self then we begin that most enriching encounter: to see Self enclosed within our Maker. Julian of Norwich tells us: 'God is nearer to us than our own Soul'. Educated by the Jesuits from the age of nine, John Skinner left school to join the Society of Jesus. For thirteen years he followed their formation, especially the Ignatian method of prayer. But ahead of ordination, he changed course to join The Times. Five years on Fleet Street left him breathless, so that he became a children's bookseller to found The Red House. Returning to his former trail twenty years on, he managed to spend a bare fortnight living, praying and working alongside the Carthusians of Parkminster. His narrative of that healing time, Hear our Silence, tells that tale; it also led to an invitation to those outside the cloister to deepen their own experience of prayer. 'I told the Prior: "I am going to steal your Silence, and take it outside".His answer: use our name".' What better invitation ... Gracewing is also the publisher of John Skinner's companion volume, Sounding the Silence, as well his first book, Hear Our Silence, and his translation into modern English of Revelation of Love by Julian of Norwich.

The 365 daily readings from Wisdom of the Cloister offer the serenity of monastic life to a wide audience. Especially intended to serve the general reader, this collection surveys the whole of Christian monasticism. Included here are a full range of writings, from the earliest desert mothers and fathers to contemporary monastics.John Skinner, author and translator of many texts of spirituality, invites the reader to peruse these varied writings using the immediately accessible style of reading known as lectio divina. This custom, traditionally favored by monks, works on the idea that inspired texts should be approached as a means for hearing God speaking through and within the text. By way of this prayerful, openhearted method, readers may glean personal insights that are uniquely relevant and meaningful to their lives.Wisdom of the Cloister is both a resource for daily inspiration and an overview of the world of monasticism.

JULIAN OF NORWICH, England's greatest mystic, became the first woman to write in the English language when she recorded her Sixteen Showings revealing an intimate message of God's love and well-being for his human family. In the week of May 8, 1375, she suffered a series of visions centring on the final sufferings of Christ. Following this overwhelming experience, she became an anchorite in a cell attached to the tiny church of St Julian in the city of Norwich. And here she spent more than twenty years in prayerful contemplation, eventually recording her Showings. The first woman to write in the English tongue, her writings only came to the fore at the beginning of the twentieth century; they have gained a growing audience worldwide ever since.John Skinner's modern translation, A Revelation of Love (published by Gracewing in 2004), with its inclusive language offered a fresh approach to Julian's powerful message of God's love for his human family. The aim of his latest work is to enable newcomers to Julian to understand her complex theology and penetrate her deepest meaning. Using the major part of his original translation, Skinner inserts commentary and interpretation into the text. The result is a flowing account of Julian's work where her voice is to be heard ever more clearly.

There are numerous twentieth century writers in English who are not technically native speakers of the language, and whose relation to it is ambivalent, problematic or even hostile: by a simple kinship analogy one may often speak of the 'stepmother tongue'.

The formal and expressive range of canonic eighteenth-century fiction is enourmous: between them Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne seem to have anticipated just about every question confronting the modern novelist;

After discussing critical assessments of Brookner, and attempts to relate her to various classics and contemporaries, Dr Skinner skilfully combines insights from recent narrative theory with close analyses of nine novels.