Shann Ray

A novel in five novellas, Where Blackbirds Fly offers a prismatic deep dive into the human heart through fierce narratives of intimacy both lovely and heartbreaking. Countering social upheavals, Shann Ray affirms the power of empathy, the wisdom of wilderness, and the felt presence of divine mystery echoed in the recurring appearances of blackbirds, as if etching flight patterns of mercy over the landscapes of human life. John Sender and Samantha Valeria Arrarás seek love in the financial industry, their initial attraction leading to unforeseen perils that will echo in those who enter and exit their lives. The characters of this novel form a compelling cross section of humanity met with revelation, suffering, and possibility. With spare and muscular prose, luminosity, and psychological grace, Ray weaves a tapestry as multihued as America in a vision of love’s transgressive power.

The Souls of Others is a powerful essay collection by American Book Award winner Shann Ray. Ray depicts the American west as both magnificent and destitute. The mountains are alive. The people are gritty, destitute, and resilient. Nature offers its bounty but never gives it with ease. Ray, having spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, expertly paints a place of family, sorrow, and a connection to Mother Nature that so many Americans have lost.

The Souls of Others is a powerful essay collection by American Book Award winner Shann Ray. Ray depicts the American west as both magnificent and destitute. The mountains are alive. The people are gritty, destitute, and resilient. Nature offers its bounty but never gives it with ease. Ray, having spent part of his childhood on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, expertly paints a place of family, sorrow, and a connection to Mother Nature that so many Americans have lost.

Atomic Theory 7, a collaboration in the truest sense between the fiercely-imagined poems of Shann Ray and the sacramental art of Trinh Mai, considers a most uncommon union between the lover and the beloved: the body at rest and war, in beauty and peace, in violence and despair, in the finality of darkness and the atomic fusion that beckons new life. The unity between dark and light in Atomic Theory 7 is open, composed of untold force, robustly unknowable, and intimately attuned. Even the most forbidding trauma is not in vain. From the ashes of holocaust, love becomes an essential human gift found not only in casting one's eyes upward, but in visceral, physical gestures: a healing hand on the chest of friends and strangers, a loving embrace between enemies. The breath of the holy over the wristbones of a child. A touch of the numinous at the zenith of the shoulder blades. God in all things. Breath. Whisper. Song. Here it is not the Divine who commits genocide but people, and in the heartrending aftermath, we are given the grace to meet one another again, kiss each other in peace, and go forth fused with atomic responsibility.

Atomic Theory 7, a collaboration in the truest sense between the fiercely-imagined poems of Shann Ray and the sacramental art of Trinh Mai, considers a most uncommon union between the lover and the beloved: the body at rest and war, in beauty and peace, in violence and despair, in the finality of darkness and the atomic fusion that beckons new life. The unity between dark and light in Atomic Theory 7 is open, composed of untold force, robustly unknowable, and intimately attuned. Even the most forbidding trauma is not in vain. From the ashes of holocaust, love becomes an essential human gift found not only in casting one's eyes upward, but in visceral, physical gestures: a healing hand on the chest of friends and strangers, a loving embrace between enemies. The breath of the holy over the wristbones of a child. A touch of the numinous at the zenith of the shoulder blades. God in all things. Breath. Whisper. Song. Here it is not the Divine who commits genocide but people, and in the heartrending aftermath, we are given the grace to meet one another again, kiss each other in peace, and go forth fused with atomic responsibility.

A cycle akin to the seasons of a life, Blood Fire Vapor Smoke asks questions of the ancient struggle between life and death amidst landscapes new and old. Does ultimate forgiveness answer to ultimate violence in the world? What is the nature of grace? Who determines the fates that move us? A collection of stories opening upon the inner world with the abandon and gravity involved in personal and collective responsibility, the book responds to the present age of enragement, and the collapsing binary of two hungers: violence and forgiveness. Blood Fire Vapor Smoke considers the human myth of regeneration through violence, and the aftermath of loneliness, love, and yearning found in a more merciful expression of human existence. Violence is caught by love, and changed, transcended, and transformed into a yearning for restoration, atonement, and the fusion embodied in the true power of community, humility, and greater humanity. The characters in each of the four sections of this collection of stories and one long poem, pass through thresholds of knowledge and responsibility. Asking not what life owes them, but what they may receive from life, and in the end, just how they are responsible for life, those who people this collection cross into unforeseen places of mystery, mercy, and grace.In Blood Fire Vapor Smoke, beyond our inevitable compulsions toward violent ends, healing calls, beckoning us toward a crossroads where we turn and face one another, finding the beauty and strength to serve and love one another again.

A cycle akin to the seasons of a life, Blood Fire Vapor Smoke asks questions of the ancient struggle between life and death amidst landscapes new and old. Does ultimate forgiveness answer to ultimate violence in the world? What is the nature of grace? Who determines the fates that move us? A collection of stories opening upon the inner world with the abandon and gravity involved in personal and collective responsibility, the book responds to the present age of enragement, and the collapsing binary of two hungers: violence and forgiveness. Blood Fire Vapor Smoke considers the human myth of regeneration through violence, and the aftermath of loneliness, love, and yearning found in a more merciful expression of human existence. Violence is caught by love, and changed, transcended, and transformed into a yearning for restoration, atonement, and the fusion embodied in the true power of community, humility, and greater humanity. The characters in each of the four sections of this collection of stories and one long poem, pass through thresholds of knowledge and responsibility. Asking not what life owes them, but what they may receive from life, and in the end, just how they are responsible for life, those who people this collection cross into unforeseen places of mystery, mercy, and grace.In Blood Fire Vapor Smoke, beyond our inevitable compulsions toward violent ends, healing calls, beckoning us toward a crossroads where we turn and face one another, finding the beauty and strength to serve and love one another again.

We live in a fallen world where offenses and serious grievances occur in every person's life. These painful situations, no matter how slight or serious, demand that we face the question, ""Does God expect me to forgive?"" The answer is clear. The choice is ours to obey. The power comes from God alone. I Choose to Forgive tells the heartbreaking journey from devastation to freedom from the unique perspective of a mother, father, and sibling on the ultimate offense of murder. In addition, the powerful testimony of the murderer's journey of finding forgiveness is shared in his own words. These personal stories are rooted in a strong biblical foundation, which undergirds the practical steps of choosing forgiveness. ""This is the book I was hoping Dianne could write in 2010 when the first edition was published. Hearing from her husband, her daughter, and the man who murdered her son in this edition helps us to see how we process grief in different ways. The facilitation material at the end is also an excellent addition. A deeply personal, powerful book for hurting people."" --Judith Lingenfelter, Biola University Faculty Emerita ""If your adult child were murdered, could you ever forgive the killer? Is that really what God would have you do? Could you grow to experience God's love and forgiveness yourself in such a way that you then could actually face your son's killer, see his need for God's love, and forgive him? God did just that in Dianne and Glenn Collard's lives. I Choose to Forgive tells their remarkable, heart-stirring story. As you read their story, I know you will find help to forgive and release those whose lives have hurt and traumatized you. And, in the process, God will give you new freedom yourself."" --Byron Spradlin, president, Artists in Christian Testimony Intl, Brentwood, Tennessee ""As a father, I can't quite imagine how I would forgive a person who murdered my children. I would likely be overcome by rage and suffocated by grief. And I would need to hear others share their stories, to show me how the impossible might become possible in the face of a nightmarish tragedy. That's of course the beautiful gift of this book: a story of Dianne's encounter with God's extraordinary grace that enables her to do the impossible: to forgive and in that gift of forgiveness to know freedom and joy."" --W. David O. Taylor, Fuller Theological Seminary Dianne B. Collard is a missionary, international speaker, creative catalyst, and advocate for artists. She serves as the Europe Ministry Director of A.C.T. International and is the Director of ArtsCharlotte.

We live in a fallen world where offenses and serious grievances occur in every person's life. These painful situations, no matter how slight or serious, demand that we face the question, ""Does God expect me to forgive?"" The answer is clear. The choice is ours to obey. The power comes from God alone. I Choose to Forgive tells the heartbreaking journey from devastation to freedom from the unique perspective of a mother, father, and sibling on the ultimate offense of murder. In addition, the powerful testimony of the murderer's journey of finding forgiveness is shared in his own words. These personal stories are rooted in a strong biblical foundation, which undergirds the practical steps of choosing forgiveness. ""This is the book I was hoping Dianne could write in 2010 when the first edition was published. Hearing from her husband, her daughter, and the man who murdered her son in this edition helps us to see how we process grief in different ways. The facilitation material at the end is also an excellent addition. A deeply personal, powerful book for hurting people."" --Judith Lingenfelter, Biola University Faculty Emerita ""If your adult child were murdered, could you ever forgive the killer? Is that really what God would have you do? Could you grow to experience God's love and forgiveness yourself in such a way that you then could actually face your son's killer, see his need for God's love, and forgive him? God did just that in Dianne and Glenn Collard's lives. I Choose to Forgive tells their remarkable, heart-stirring story. As you read their story, I know you will find help to forgive and release those whose lives have hurt and traumatized you. And, in the process, God will give you new freedom yourself."" --Byron Spradlin, president, Artists in Christian Testimony Intl, Brentwood, Tennessee ""As a father, I can't quite imagine how I would forgive a person who murdered my children. I would likely be overcome by rage and suffocated by grief. And I would need to hear others share their stories, to show me how the impossible might become possible in the face of a nightmarish tragedy. That's of course the beautiful gift of this book: a story of Dianne's encounter with God's extraordinary grace that enables her to do the impossible: to forgive and in that gift of forgiveness to know freedom and joy."" --W. David O. Taylor, Fuller Theological Seminary Dianne B. Collard is a missionary, international speaker, creative catalyst, and advocate for artists. She serves as the Europe Ministry Director of A.C.T. International and is the Director of ArtsCharlotte.

In Shann Ray’s collection, Balefire, one senses always the poet’s tender regard for family as well as the forces of nature that flesh, flame, and fray each human relationship,

The American West has long been a place where myth and legend have flourished. Where men stood tall and lived rough. But the West is no more. In its place Shann Ray finds washed-up basketball players, businessmen hiding addictions and women fighting the inexplicable violence that wells up in these men. In these stories, Ray grapples with terrible hurt experienced and finds that reconciliation, if far off, is at least possible. The debut of a writer who is out to redefine the contours of the West, this collection is a deeply felt ode to the country that is left behind.