About Phyllis Tickle

PHYLLIS TICKLE, founding editor of the Religion Department of PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, the international journal of the book industry, is frequently quoted in print sources, electronic media, and innumerable blogs and web sites.  Tickle is an authority on religion in America and a much sought after lecturer on the subject.

In addition to lectures and numerous essays, articles, and interviews, Tickle is the author of over three dozen books in religion and spirituality, most recently Age of the SpiritEmergence Christianity-What It Is, Where It Is Going, and Why It Matters, The Great Emergence, How Christianity is Changing and Why and The Words of Jesus, A Gospel of the Sayings of Our Lord.  She is also the author of the notable and popular The Divine Hours series of manuals for observing fixed-hour prayer: The Divine Hours – Prayers for Summertime, The Divine Hours – Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime, The Divine Hours – Prayers for Springtime, Eastertide- Prayers for Lent Through Easter from The Divine Hours, and Christmastide – Prayers for Advent through Epiphany from The Divine Hours (Doubleday); The Night Offices from The Divine Hours and The Pocket Edition of The Divine Hours (Oxford University Press); and This Is What I Pray Today – The Divine Hours  Prayers for Children(Dutton)

Tickle began her career as a college teacher and, for almost six years, served as academic dean to the Memphis College of Art before entering full time into writing and publishing. In September 1996 she received the Mays Award, one of the book industry’s most prestigious awards for lifetime achievement in writing and publishing, and specifically in recognition of her work in gaining mainstream media coverage of religion publishing. In 2007 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Christy Awards “In gratitude for a lifetime as an advocate for fiction written to the glory of God.”  In 2004, she received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the Berkeley School of Divinity at Yale University. In 2009 she received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from North Park University.

Tickle, who serves now, as she has in the past, on a number of advisory and corporate boards, is a lay eucharistic minister and lector in the Episcopal Church. She and her late husband were the parents of seven children, and in retirement, she continues to make her home on the small farm that they shared for almost forty years in Lucy, Tennessee.

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