Luci Shaw


Luci Shaw is a Christian writer of poetry and essays.

Background

Shaw was born on December 29, 1928 in England. Her parents were medical missionaries, and she lived in Canada and Australia before moving to the United States to attend Wheaton College, Illinois. Shaw graduated from Wheaton in 1953 with high honors.
Shaw became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1995.
Shaw is now Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver. She lectures on art and spirituality, the Christian imagination, poetry-writing, and journaling as an aid to artistic and spiritual growth.
She has published ten volumes of poetry and numerous non-fiction books, and has edited and collaborated on multiple other works, including several with Madeleine L'Engle. Her poems are widely anthologized. Shaw usually works in free verse, and typically her poems are quite short, less than a page. Nevertheless, in tone and content, she affiliates most readily with the transcendental poets, often finding in natural details and themes the touch of the eternal or other-worldly.
She is a charter member of the Chrysostom Society, an organization of published writers which "serves the Christian community by promoting the development of quality literature."
Shaw married Harold Shaw and had five children: Robin, Marian, John, Jeffrey, and Kristin. Shaw and her husband started a publishing house, Harold Shaw Publishers, in the basement of their home in 1972. After Harold died from lung cancer in 1986, Shaw became president of Harold Shaw Publishers. Stephen Board became owner of Harold Shaw Publishers in 1990 and sold it to Random House's WaterBrook Press in 2000.
Shaw married John Hoyte in 1991. They are members of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Bellingham, Washington where they currently live.

Selected works

Poetry

A number of Shaw's works have been set to music, by a variety of composers: