HELEN LUKE: A Sense of the Sacred

Friday, September 25

An Evening With...

Barbara Mowat

Helen Luke, the founder of Apple Farm, a Jungian contemplative community in Three Rivers, Michigan, has become an important voice among those who would learn how to live a fully conscious life. In her many books and essays, she writes perceptively about myth and symbol in life and in art, focusing often on story and how it can guide us in our inner journey. Not long before her death at the age of 90, A Sense of the Sacred: A Portrait of Helen Luke was filmed over the course of many months at Apple Farm. Contributing to the film are Thomas Moore, Robert Johnson, Sir Laurens van der Post, and the director Peter Brook.

Barbara Mowat worked with Helen for twenty years and is her literary executor. She is Director of Research emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Consulting Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, and Editor (with Paul Werstine) of the New Folger Library Shakespeare. Her major fields of research interest are Shakespeare's printed texts, his dramatic romances, and his reading practices. She holds an M.A. degree in English literature from the University of Virginia, a Ph.D. in English literature from Auburn University, and Doctorates of Humane Letters from Amherst College, St. Johns University, and Washington College. Before coming to the Folger, she was Hollifield Professor of English Literature at Auburn University and then Dean of the College at Washington College. She has served as President of the Shakespeare Association of America, Chair of the MLA Committee on the New Variorum Shakespeare, and a member of the Advisory Board of the International Shakespeare Conference (Stratford-upon-Avon).