SHARING THE BURDEN OR REPAIR: Reentry After Mass Incarceration
A Wising Up Listening Project
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS —WISING UP ANTHOLOGIES
GOODNESS Deadline August 15, 2020
FLIP SIDES: Myths We Live By - Spot Cleaning Our Dirty Laundry
Deadline September 15, 2020
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
RE-CREATING OUR COMMON CHORD, A Wising Up Anthology
NOT NATIVE: Short Stories of Immigrant Life in an In-Between World by Murali Kamma
Bronze medal winner, 2020 IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Award) for Multicultural Fiction
A WELCOMING PHILOSOPHY
The aim of Universal Table is to promote tolerance and social trust along many dimensions of life - or those are the words we have been using in our official mission statement. But each time we use them, we realize we are trying to describe something far broader - something that encompasses welcome, difference, surprise and inclusion, truthfulness and authenticity, and an equal place for each of us and what we hold most dear. These are the true goals of Universal Table: Finding the We in Them, the Us in You.
Our major activities are the books we create and publish through Wising Up Press, and the Universal Table workshops and research projects that both develop and support them. Our areas of particular interest are social justice & inclusion, immigration & belonging, pluralism in families, illness & meaning, social and psychological resiliency, creative aging, listening across faiths - and the many other complex challenges and lasting rewards of living up close and personal with pluralism in social, family, religious, and civic life.
What distinguishes our approach is an equal emphasis on the why and the how of living well with difference. Through our research projects, we are developing new interpretations of chronic areas of social discord, interpretations that make it safer for us to interact from a position of respect and appreciation with people who have very different world views and value systems.
We are equally interested in specific techniques, especially the use of story and other art forms, to help us change our patterns of direct personal interaction, so that we can live out our best intentions. What ways of thinking, imagining, listening, speaking and being with one another truly expand our worlds? For real, sustainable change takes place at the day by day, person by person, word by word, gesture by gesture level - and it isn't easy and it isn't simple. But fascinating, rewarding, energizing, inspiring, and worth all the effort - without a doubt.
NEW PUBLICATION
AVAILABLE NOW
SHARING THE BURDEN OF REPAIR: REENTRY AFTER MASS INCARCERATION
A Wising Up Listening Project
This book describes a six-year listening project on reentry that took place at the crest of an unusual wave of bipartisan criminal justice reform in Georgia, one of our most punishing states. Its primary intended audience is common citizens, like us, concerned about the reality of mass incarceration but unsure how to engage. . .READ MORE
CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS
GOODNESS
It is hard to define goodness, but we know it when we see it. In action or inaction, that pause that isn't uncertain, that is more like a deep, steady breath, an existential embrace. It is easier to see goodness in others than in ourselves. But do we experience it as a choice or part of their essential nature? If a choice, what is the nature of the choice? READ MORE
Deadline August 15, 2020
FLIP SIDES
Truth, Fair Play & Other Myths We Live By So what if they aren't absolutes, they can be guiding stars, saving fictions. . .
Spot Cleaning Our Dirty Laundry Ouch! How bad was it really? Who is to say?
RE-CREATING OUR COMMON CHORD A Wising Up Anthology
With the intense polarization in our society these days, the volume and vitriol so high on all sides, how do we live out our commitment to the existentially equal value of those around us when we ourselves feel deeply devalued, feel our definition of the common good is unheard or denied? What do we do with our strong responses to the threat that devaluation poses—a threat our bodies and our hearts recognize even faster than our minds? . . .
Thirty-seven contemporary writers share here, through memoir, fiction, poetry, and essay, their own experiences with discovering, creating, or re-creating our common chord across nationality, class, criminal justice, religion, race, politics, family, community. Come join us . . .
NOT NATIVE: Short Stories of Immigrant Life in an In-Between World Murali Kamma
The stories in this debut collection explore experiences of first generation Indian immigrants in the U.S. Kamma’s characters deal with conflict, growth, dislocation, and renewal in a new world. Their old world is also present, and this "in-betweenness" shapes their lives.
Bronze medal winner, 2020 IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Award) for Multicultural Fiction
GREEN CARD & OTHER ESSAYS
by Áine Greaney
In Green Card & Other Essays, Áine Greaney invites her readers to follow her three-decades' long journey from Irish citizen and resident to new immigrant and green card holder to dual citizenship that now includes naturalized U.S. citizenship.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO USE AN ANTHOLOGY TO START A CONVERSATION?
We see our books, especially our Wising Up Anthologies, as catalysts for community, a way of deepening the conversations that develop through the shared experience of reading, especially around areas of sticky, or strident, social concern . . . Read More
Stephanie Hart: Contributing author and discussion leader
The Kindness of Strangers NYC Discussion Group
Universal Table Finding the We in Them, the Us in You. Wising Up Press
www.universaltable.org P.O. Box 2122, Decatur, GA 30031-2122 404-276-6046
