Celebrate Shorter puts the focus on student achievement and success at Shorter College

March 25 - Success and achievement will be the focus of the day on April 1 as Shorter College observes its annual Celebrate Shorter day. From science and business presentations to award-winning poetry readings and theatre showcases, all academic aspects of the college will be recognized. Celebrate Shorter honors students’ hard work in the classroom and their skills in each academic discipline. This year’s guest speaker for the closing session will be Shorter alumna Phyllis Tickle, who served as founding editor of the religion department of Publishers Weekly. An authority on religion in America, Tickle is a much sought after lecturer. In addition to lectures and numerous essays, articles, and interviews, she is the author of more than two dozen books in religion and spirituality, most notably the Divine Hours series of manuals for observing fixed-hour prayer.

Tickle, who was with Publishers Weekly until her retirement in 2004, began her career as a college teacher and, for almost 10 years, served as academic dean to the Memphis College of Art before entering full time into writing and publishing. In September 1996, she received the Mays Award, one of the book industry's most prestigious awards for lifetime achievement in writing and publishing and specifically in recognition of her work in gaining mainstream media coverage of religion publishing.

In 2004, she received the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the Berkeley School of Divinity at Yale University, also in recognition of her work. In 2007, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Christy Awards "in gratitude for a lifetime as an advocate for fiction written to the glory of God."

Phyllis Tickle at home in Lucy, TN.

Tickle is currently a senior fellow of Cathedral College of the Washington National Cathedral. A founding member of The Canterbury Roundtable, she serves now, as she has in the past, on a number of advisory and corporate boards. A lay Eucharistic minister and lector in the Episcopal Church, she is the mother of seven children and, with her physician-husband, makes her home on a small farm in Lucy, Tenn.

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Schedule for Celebrate Shorter>