CC@S invites you to join us Sunday, October 16, after the 4:30 Eucharist for a reception honoring Barbara and Al Gelpi and celebrating with them their acceptance of the Flannery O'Connor Lifetime Achievement Award.
Recently, the fourth biennial Conference on the Catholic Imagination took place at the University of Dallas. This conference has among its several stated goals:
• to enhance understanding and appreciation of the richness and variety of contributions being made by Catholic writers to contemporary literature;
• to explore the critical and theoretical foundations of the Catholic Imagination; and
• to empower members of the Catholic literary community and find ways to create conditions under which the Catholic Imagination might continue to flourish.
Presentations by scholars, novelists, poets, and playwrights comprise the bulk of the conference activities, but the highlight is a banquet at which the Flannery O’Connor Lifetime Achievement Award is presented. And this year it was given to two of our Stanford Catholic Community members, Barbara and Al Gelpi.
The Doctors Gelpi, both retired English Professors, were cited for their learning, teaching, and scholarship over many decades at Stanford—scholarship that is informed by their deep love of God. After being formally introduced, each spoke for about 10 minutes, invoking the eloquent and moving words of Catholic essayists and poets to illustrate their points. Together they wove a spell that brought the hundreds of guests to their feet in an ovation.
We join those hundreds of conference-goers in saluting a remarkable couple whose gifts enrich the lives of so many of us here in our Catholic Community.
