Festival of Faith and Poetry
Come to the first of what we hope will be an annual festival featuring poets and writers from the Princeton area or further away. Each week poets will read from their own work and discuss faith as inspiration for the craft of poetry.
Janet Anderson
Roz Anderson Flood
Sandra Duguid
Henry Gerstman
May 1, 9:15AM
Assembly Room
Sandra Duguid has published a full-length collection of poems, Pails Scrubbed Silver (2013) and numerous poems in anthologies and journals. She received a Fellowship in Poetry from the N.J. State Council on the Arts. For twenty-five years she taught literature and writing at colleges in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
Henry Gerstman began painting and drawing while obtaining a degree in architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where painter Edward Millman encouraged him in Abstract Expressionism. Subsequently, he spent a year in Rome and two in Paris studying briefly with Sir William Stanley Hayter.
Roz Anderson Flood has published poetry in The Harvard Advocate. She studied poetry with Jane Shore, Laura Boss and Boston Poet Laureate, Sam Cornish, among others. Roz is a member of the Adult Education Committee and also of the Adult Choir.
Janet Anderson has been a researcher and copy editor and is still a writer and, sometimes, a poet. She has lived in Princeton for 27 years.
Community Poem
We invite you to submit a line of poetry that captures an aspect of your experience of faith and life in the church. We will make a single poem from all of the submissions — a Nassau community poem. Friends and family are welcome to participate. Submit your line at nassauchurch.org/poem-2016.
Elvis Alves
Vasiliki Katsarou
May 8, 9:15AM
Assembly Room
Vasiliki Katsarou published her first collection, Memento Tsunami, in 2011, and one of its poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She read her poems in the 2014 Dodge Poetry Festival, and has been honored to serve as a Geraldine R. Dodge Poet in the Schools. She wrote and directed the award-winning 35mm short film, Fruitlands 1843. Her website is www.onegoldbead.com.
Elvis Alves was born in Guyana and raised in Brooklyn, NY. A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, he is the author of the poetry collection Bitter Melon. His poetry has appeared in several journals and magazines and he writes for The Good Men Project and for The Compulsive Reader. Nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry. Elvis teaches Religion at the George School in Newtown, P.A.
Learn Something? Share it #WritingFaith 
Nassau Serving the World
The Church as Apostles: Serving the Church beyond These Walls
Joyce MacKichan Walker
May 15, 9:15AM
Assembly Room
This Body of Christ we call Nassau looks to the world God loves because Jesus sends us there. Discover the places where Nassau serves “the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the prisoner” (Matthew 25:31–46). Will you come and hear about the three significant partnerships your capital campaign gifts have created? Be prepared to be challenged to explore how your call from God and your gifts of the Spirit intersect with Nassau’s ministries — they are, after all, your ministry.
Joyce MacKichan Walker is Minister of Education and Mission at Nassau. She is especially eager to invite all to offer their gifts in the places where their own hearts are touched by the hurting hearts of others.
Special Session
The Syrian Refugee Crisis…and the World’s Varying Responses
Deborah Amos
May 15, 12:15PM
Assembly Room
Deborah Amos, who covers the Middle East for NPR News with reports heard on “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered” and “Weekend Edition,” will discuss the Syrian refugee crisis and the world’s varying responses. Amos has received the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting from Georgetown University and the Edward R. Murrow Life Time Achievement Award from Washington State University. She was part of a team of reporters who won a Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for coverage of Iraq. Amos also has served as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School.
A Life and Legacy Revealed: Singing Faith—All Day Long
Sue Ellen Page
May 22, 9:15AM
Assembly Room
Singing Faith—All Day Long is a recording created to help families share songs of the Christian faith. It is a collaboration between the NPC Worship and Arts Committee and Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. In her last official public act as the Director of Choirs for Children and Youth at NPC (she retires nine days later!) Sue Ellen Page, who has served as artistic director of the Singing Faith project, will share a synopsis of the journey as well as some tracks from the recording.
Sue Ellen Page has served Nassau Presbyterian Church for almost 34 years as Director of Choirs for Children and Youth. During that time she has published a book, Hearts & Hands & Voices: Growing in Faith Through Choral Music (1995), raised up hundreds of choir members who sing in churches and choruses far and wide, led choral festivals all over the country and beyond, and most important, taught the faith through music to all of God’s children within her reach. To God be the glory!
“I think these are the best Bible studies, the ones that involve a conversation between people” —from a #NassauAdults class
— Nassau Church (@NassauChurch) April 21, 2016
Of Note
Our Sunday summer schedule begins on May 29. We will have one worship service at 10:00AM, with Adult Education following at 11:15AM beginning June 12. Coffee and bagels will be available at every class.