Lynn Szabo is Professor Emerita of the English Department of Trinity Western University: a liberal arts university in B.C., Canada. She taught English and Creative Writing to both undergraduate and graduate students. Lynn served as both Chair of the Department and English Stream Coordinator of the Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies and Humanities. She mentored directed studies students, graduate students and teaching assistants, including supervising graduate theses and guiding students through the Ph.D. application process and their studies. She has also served as Chair of the Editorial Board of [spaces], the university’s literary journal. Lynn’s publications include books, scholarly articles and poetry. InThe Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton was published in 2005.
“Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world, nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality. ”
— Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky
Publications:
Select publications include:
In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton. Lynn R. Szabo, ed. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2005.
“Hiding the Ace of Freedoms: Thomas Merton’s Cables to the Ace.” The Merton Annual 15 (Winter 2002): 203-221.
“Thomas Merton: A Man for our Times.” Canadian Theological Review 20 (Fall 2001): 2-15.
“The Sound of Sheer Silence: A Study in the Poetics of Thomas Merton.” The Merton Annual 13 (2000): 204-13.
“The Mystical Ecology of Merton’s Poetics” in Thomas Merton: Monk on the Edge. Ross Labrie and Angus Stuart, eds. Vancouver, BC: The Thomas Merton Society of Canada, 2012.
Szabo, Lynn R. “Thomas Merton’s Divinations for a Twenty-first Century
Christian Reader. “In Christian Thought in the Twenty-first Century. Douglas Shantz, ed. Eugene, OR: Cascade Press, 2012.
Nelson, H., Szabo, L.R. and J. Zimmermann, eds. Through a Glass Darkly: Suffering, the Sacred and the Sublime in Literature and Theory. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2010.
Teaching and Mentoring:
Lynn has always taken an active interest in the academic lives of her students and has a long history of encouraging students to apply to graduate school and for grants and scholarships (in particular, Ph.D. programs, SSHRC and Canada Council Grants). She also assists students with editing, publishing, submitting scholarly articles to academic journals, and applying for academic posts.
Academic Honours and Awards:
Rooted and Reaching Faculty Award (2013) (TWU)
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (1998-2008)
Priscilla and Stanford Reid Trust: Award in support of Conference on Christianity and Literature (2007) (TWU)
Dean’s Innovative Teaching Award (2005) (TWU)
Canada Council for the Arts Grant (2004)
Shannon Fellowship, International Thomas Merton Society (1997)
Please get in touch with Lynndirectly for further information regarding additional awards, grants, scholarships, published material and book reviews/interviews.
Associations and Membership:
Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English
Member (former Vice-President), International Thomas Merton Society
