I'm teaching a course that includes taking a team of writers to the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing 2016 in April. Every other year Calvin College brings in some of the most acclaimed writers in the world, which includes people from different faith backgrounds. My favorite conference.I just finished reading (all on audio) Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad, by  M.T. Anderson. Having visited St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad) in 1992, I was amazed to learn that the city endured a three-year siege under Hitler, during which he sought to starve them out and nearly succeeded. Anderson tells the story like a novelist. Great stuff, though quite macabre in places. The big takeaway: music saved lives.An altogether different kind of read was Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint, by Nadia Bolz-Weber. The founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Bolz-Weber also authored the New York Times bestseller Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People (Convergent, 2015). She's an ELCA-ordained pastor (Lutheran) who swears like a truck driver, sports a zillion tattoos, and lifts weights. She's also married with two kids. And she really gets grace.The entire class is reading The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma, a depressing but well written story set in Africa. And I also read This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff. All these talented authors will be at Calvin, if all goes as planned. Next up: The Cleaner of Chartres, by Salley Vickers. I've also been listening to White Teeth, by Zadie Smith, but I'm having trouble getting into the story. So off to Chartres it is.