by Dianne Dugaw (Author)
CALIFORNIA MEDIEVAL is an intriguing hybrid memoir, interspersed with poetry, song, and lyrical vignettes. It explores the world of a Franciscan convent during the heyday of the 1960s in San Francisco at the birth of the flower-power era, as seen through the eyes of a novitiate nun, newly arrived in the Bay Area from a rural community in southwestern Washington State. This book is a stylistically and structurally adventurous narrative that forms a literary intersection of music, spirituality, nature, sociology, and sexuality. Written in an engaging, wryly humorous voice, Dugaw's unique story of her early adulthood at a convent is sure to draw readers who are curious about her cloistered life at a time in our country's history that was in the midst of its own spiritual and social awakening.
Author Biography
Dianne Dugaw is a writer, poet, folklore scholar and musician, residing in Eugene, Or, and a former professor of English Literature at the University of Oregon. A native of Washington state where she grew up in a ranching community, Dianne was a Catholic nun from her late teens to her early twenties, after which she worked variously as an elementary school music teacher and professional musician. She holds a masters degree in Music and a Ph.D. in English Folklore. Her academic work has been published by Cambridge University Press and University of Delaware Press among others, and in addition she has recorded music CDs of traditional English and Scottish ballads.