Is intimacy worth the risk?
Attendees pondered the answer at the warm launch reception for Judy Tiesel-Jensen’s Invitation to Intimacy: What the Marriage of Two Couples Therapists Reveals About Risk, Transformation, and the Astonishing Healing Power of Intimacy. Held at the Maumelle home of writer Elizabeth Shores, the reading felt like a return to the meaningful and inspiring events that our literary community has missed during the pandemic. We are deeply thankful to Elizabeth and her husband, Buddy, for so generously opening their home for the launch.
A biographer, Shore’s latest book is Shared Secrets: The Queer World of Newberry Medalist Charles J. Finger, published by University of Arkansas Press. For nearly a century, British expatriate Charles Joseph Finger (1867–1941) was best known as an award-winning author of children’s literature. In Shared Secrets, Elizabeth Findley Shores relates Finger’s untold story, exploring the secrets that connected the author to an international community of twentieth-century queer literati. Shared Secrets is both the story of Finger’s remarkable, adventurous life and a rare look at a community of gay writers and artists who helped shaped twentieth-century American culture, even as they artfully concealed their own identities.
About Invitation to Intimacy, Shores says:
“Judy Tiesel-Jensen brings the laser-pointer empathy she demonstrates in person to this memoir of marriage and loss, revealing how much she understands about how we all sometimes suffer. From a cliff-hanger opening to the final tender scenes, Invitation to Intimacy is a relatable book that the reader will not soon forget. It is a book for couples, for other marriage and family therapists, and for anyone who feels the urge to write her own story. Why, after all, do any of us write memoirs? To preserve those feelings? To ask the universe for forgiveness? To be remembered when no one who knew us is still alive? For all of those reasons, Judy Tiesel-Jensen has shown us that love doesn’t die.”
