Anita Mathias

Wandering Between Two Worlds: Essays on Faith and Art Anita Mathias

In lyrical essays, Wandering between Two Worlds explores Anita Mathias's naughty Catholic childhood in India; her large, eccentric extended family in the Catholic sea-coast town of Mangalore; her rebellion and atheism as a teenager in St. Mary's Convent, Nainital, her Himalayan boarding school, run by German missionary nuns; and her abrupt religious conversion whereupon she entered Mother Teresa's convent as a novice. Later essays explores the dualities of her life as a writer, mother, and Christian in the U. S.-- Domesticity and Art, Writing and Prayer, and the experience of being "an alien and stranger" as an immigrant in America, sensing the need for roots. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, London Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, Commonweal, Notre Dame Magazine, America, The Christian Century, and The Best Spiritual Writing (HarperSanFrancisco) and have won awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Minnesota State Arts Board, and The Jerome Foundation.