With consummate skill, subtle and exacting artistry, and fierce passion, Tania Runyan's first collection, Simple Weight, brilliantly unveils the mysterious ties tethering heaven to earth and] explores the painful and troubling journeys of a soul in search of the divine.... Hers is a voice brimming with a palpable humanity and beautiful pathos--complex, wise, mutable, and wholly original. --Maurya Simon, author of The Raindrop's Gospel __________ Spiritual without being in the least bit preachy, Runyan deals in matters of the heart, letting us experience the ineffable through a variety of...

In Second Sky, Runyan intertwines the life and writings of the Apostle Paul with the spiritual journey of a modern suburban woman confronting the broken world. Second Sky wrestles with the deeply personal challenges presented in Pauls letters and experiences: putting on the new self, burying oneself with Christ, and counting all as loss while driving through snowstorms, reading horrific headlines, and bathing the family dog. These are not simple poems of religious inspiration; they are steely encounters with the living God. Runyan invites us to work out our salvation in rusted Cadillacs,...

How to read a poem. A lot of books want to teach you just that. How is this one different?

Think of it less as an instructional book and more as an invitation. For the reader new to poetry, this guide will open your senses to the combined craft and magic known as "poems." For the well versed, if you will, this book might make you fall in love again.

How to Read a Poem uses images like the mouse, the hive, the switch (from the Billy Collins poem "Introduction to Poetry")-to guide readers into new ways of understanding poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology included.

Is it possible to teach someone how to write a poem? Or does poetry simply "come from the heart" or from a special talent only some can ever hope to have?

Of course there's no formula for writing an amazing poem. If poems came with instructions like IKEA(r) coffee tables, we'd all be missing the point. But this book will give you some strategies-some tools, if you will-to assemble your personal, imaginative raw materials into poems that will surprise and intrigue. These strategies are focused primarily on free verse, yet many of the concepts can also be applied to form poetry, at both...

For over 15 years, Tania Runyan has guided thousands of students in understanding, exploring, and crafting the college application essay-with winning results. This guide explains what the college application essay is all about: why a student has to write it, the nature of this special writing project, when and how a student should start, and what can be learned about writing itself through this milestone process. Providing everything a student needs to go from draft to polished essay, the instruction is straightforward, easy to apply, and inspiring. Woven throughout this engaging guide are...