Words are what endure on the page. But for those who knew Luci Shaw, it was her way of being in the world that left the deepest mark. In this conversation, Jeffrey and Anne share stories of friendship that stretch across decades—stories shaped by open doors, shared meals, workshops, and unexpected invitations to belong. They describe a woman who treated strangers as peers, who noticed everything (indeed, had a remarkable attentiveness to even the ordinary), and who believed that hospitality was not optional but central to the Christian life. Along the way, they reflect on her influence as a mentor, her playful and surprising personality, and a hope that remained steady even in troubling times. The words that follow paint not only a portrait of a remarkable poet, but of a life lived with beautiful grace.
Jeffrey Overstreet is an American novelist, film critic, and creative writing professor whose work sits at the intersection of art, faith, and storytelling. He writes the long-running site Jeffrey Overstreet, formerly Looking Closer, where he covers film, music, literature, and spiritual reflection. He is the author of several books, including the memoir Through a Screen Darkly and the fantasy novels Auralia’s Colors, Cyndere’s Midnight, Raven’s Ladder, and The Ale Boy’s Feast. Overstreet teaches English and writing at Seattle Pacific University, where he earned both his BA and MFA, and he has been recognized for his criticism by outlets such as The New Yorker, TIME, The Seattle Times, IMAGE, and Christianity Today.
Anne M. Doe Overstreet is a poet, editor, and writer based in Shoreline, Washington, whose work reflects a careful attentiveness to language and craft. She is the author of Delicate Machinery Suspended, and her work has appeared in a range of journals, including Asheville Poetry Review, Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, DMQ Review, Radix Magazine, and Image Journal. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and Soapstone residency recipient, she has also shared her work through workshops and conferences across the Pacific Northwest. Alongside her creative work, she is the founder and lead editor of Spine-Line Editing, where she works with writers across genres, from poetry and fiction to academic and professional writing.
Radix: Thank you very much for being willing to do this. As you probably know, Luci was the poetry editor of Radix Magazine for many years—going back to 1992, actually. I don’t have that much history with her, so it’s lovely to be able to talk to people who do. You both especially have a meaningful connection with Luci. And from what I heard, it was a grand one?
Jeffrey Overstreet & Anne M. Doe Overstreet: So much. It would be hard to come up with names of people who have been more influential for the two of us, both artistically and personally, over the thirty years of our marriage. She shaped so many of the communities of art and faith that we were part of—conferences, publications, retreats. And by retreats, we mean both formal conference gatherings and simply getting out of the house, driving up to Bellingham for a weekend, and staying in the lower level of their home. So yes—closer than family, in many ways.
Radix: When I’ve spoken with others who knew her, something that often comes up is how Luci was simply Luci. You know, some people are quite different on the page than they are in person—the written persona can diverge from the lived one. But Luci was simply Luci.
J & A: Very much so. There was almost no division between the voice you find on the page and the person with whom you would have coffee—or better yet, chocolate—or tea and cookies. There was a real integrity there. Nothing was put on. She was fully herself. Always. And there was such peace in that. There was never any sense of envy or ego. She was simply Luci: enthusiastic about whatever was in front of her and open-armed in her relationships.
She also had a gift for recognizing that same curiosity in others. She had a very good radar for those who approached her wanting something from her, as opposed to those who sensed a kindred spirit and simply wanted to join in that play—that poetic investigation, those collaborations. And of course, because she was for so many years one of the closest friends of Madeleine L’Engle, the author of A Wrinkle in Time, many people approached Luci in hopes of getting to Madeleine. We learned that right away. There was certainly something awe-filled in meeting Luci and realizing, oh, she is Madeleine’s closest friend. But very quickly you learned that Luci was careful with that relationship—not only to protect Madeleine, but also because she grew tired of being seen merely as a path to someone else rather than being seen for who she herself was.
And she extended that same curiosity and grace to others. She wanted to know who you were. She wanted to talk about your work right away. There was a deep authenticity to that—a sensitivity to whether someone was truly present for relationship.
Radix: That reminds me of something Laurel Gasque, one of Luci’s friends, once told me about Owen Barfield who she had a friendship with. Laurel said it sometimes annoyed Barfield when people approached him only to get information about C. S. Lewis. There was some wonderful line she recalled him sarcastically quipping—something like, “No, I don’t know what kind of toothbrush he used.”
J & A: [Laughter] And it really was so rewarding to know Luci apart from her storied history with others. She had been on such friendly terms with writers and intellectuals and theologians who were giants to us. But very quickly all of that faded into the background. Sometimes we would surprise ourselves by remembering, oh yes, she moved in circles we could only have dreamed about when we were young. And yet, very quickly, she simply became what so many people have called her: something like a guardian angel for their work. That really is what she was like.
Radix: People often speak about her extraordinary ability to notice—to pay attention not only to grand things but to the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday. When I was speaking with Malcolm Guite about this, he spent quite some time reflecting on how much he appreciated her capacity to see, and it became almost theological. How did you perceive that ability in her?
J & A: When we think about her attention to ordinary things, we think of walking through any of the houses of hers we visited and seeing collections of stones, a little pottery frog, twigs, bits of wood—just anything. She paid extraordinary attention to the smallest parts of creation, and that attention entered her house and her life. Everything was a channel for words. Not simply in the sense that she would see something and be inspired to write it down, but that she actually saw things as words. A bird was a word from God. A spot of light on the wall, refracted from something outside the window, was a word from God. Every pebble on a beach had something to say. That may sound a little hokey, but it truly was the way she moved through the world. It was incredible to be around her.
She writes about an early memory of her father—how she would write little notes on scraps of paper and tuck them into his pocket, and he would later read them. That memory has always seemed to us a perfect image of her relationship with God. She did not want to miss anything. She wanted to write those little things down because through them she saw something immense.
Jeffrey: All of those poems are, in a way, little notes tucked into her Father’s pocket—to delight him, to let him know that she had noticed. And I think she sensed God’s delight in that. The day after she passed, I stood in front of my creative writing class at Seattle Pacific and tried to describe this aspect of her: that there was nothing not worthy of a poem. Nothing that was not alive with speech.
In the sense of Psalms, “day unto day pours forth speech.” So I told them, “I’m simply going to open one of her books at random, because wherever I land, you will meet Luci there.” I had a copy of The Generosity and opened it randomly to page 42—which, as fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will appreciate, gave us all a good laugh. The poem was “Presence.”
Do you mind if I read it?
Radix: Please do. Of course.
Jeffrey: Yes—this was simply the poem I happened to open to at random when I was speaking to the class.
I long to write a poem
spare as a small, open window,
allowing in only enough air
to move the curtains briefly
(a hint speaks truer than a gust).
Maybe there’ll be enough
salt in it to alert you to the ocean,
somewhere out there, beyond
the red cliffs. You may even hear
waves breaking on gravel—
that coarse sound. Or you may
sense it only by intuition, the way
you know, without seeing, that
someone you love is nearby.
When I reached that line, I felt a chill go up my spine, because she was there. I had been hoping these young writers would begin to develop a practice of noticing the small things—of paying close attention so as to perceive the larger realities those small things wished to reveal. And here, in the poem I had opened to by chance, she was speaking precisely of that: enough salt in the air to alert you to the ocean, the sense that something larger—or Someone larger—is drawing near when you attend to the little things.
Suddenly, she was there.
So, to your question: nothing was quotidian when Luci looked at it. Nothing was trivial. It was all language. I do not recall whether it was her idea to name the Chrysostom Society book A Syllable of Water, but I would not be surprised. Even the word syllable sounds like water. She was always looking at the smallest unit in order to find access to the larger thing, the larger idea. When we think of her houses, we think of the small things we noticed there. And we should also mention that she married a man who understood this as well. We did not have the privilege of knowing her first husband, and his passing remained part of her daily conversation, her writing, and her abiding love and respect for him.
J & A: But John Hoyte, Luci’s husband, noticed small things too. In their house there were bookshelves full of sketchbooks containing an illustrated pen-and-ink chronicle of his whole life, stretching back to early childhood, including the years when he was, famously, in the same concentration camp as Eric Liddell. And yet, when you looked at those pictures, he was not drawing trauma or dramatic moments. He was drawing a tree stump with a green shoot coming out of it, or the light on the mountains that day. We actually have one of his paintings of mountain light on the mantel above our fireplace, and it is as good as any window. So yes, all of her books are, in one way or another, a testament to noticing the little things.
Radix: Did she ever speak about daily practices—things she did consistently—not only spiritual disciplines as such, but habits of living she valued?
J & A: Well, it may sound rather expected, but she wrote consistently. When we first met them, the house they were living in had a skylight in the bedroom. She would often wake before dawn and watch the sky grow lighter, or watch the stars still visible through the skylight. And she would write almost every day when she was home. She simply woke with words already in her head and had to write them down, had to observe. And she was always looking for new ways to play with words as well.
One of the remarkable things about Luci was that she never seemed compelled to display expertise or authority. She led poetry seminars many times—at places like the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing and especially the Glen Workshop, the summer arts retreat hosted for decades by Image Journal. But what was striking was that she might lead a poetry seminar one summer and then return the next summer and enroll as a student in someone else’s workshop. She was never there to condescend, nor merely to be a prestigious name on the program. She was there to play, to discover, to join in with others willing to enter that same spirit of discovery. That practice of always remaining a beginner—of loving the beginner’s posture—was central to who she was.
There is a reason Eugene Peterson turned to her in the shaping of The Message. He knew her love of language, and especially her gift for language that ordinary people could find accessible, eloquent, and meaningful. She was also deeply interested in etymology, which lay close to the heart of that work.
Radix: I have also heard that Luci was a great nurturer of other poets—was that primarily with younger writers?
J & A: A person’s age, or where they happened to be on their journey, did not seem to make much difference to her. She simply loved poetry so deeply that she was eager to offer anyone who cared about it the benefit of her knowledge and encouragement. She was a wonderful mentor. One of the things we especially appreciated was that from the moment you met her, she spoke as though you were already a peer. If she knew you cared about poetry, she simply assumed you were in the same game—that you shared the same love—and the conversation flowed from there. That was deeply encouraging.
We sometimes exchanged comments on poems, and she did the same with many others. As you know, Malcolm Guite loved her work—you will find his blurbs on the backs of her books. So did Scott Cairns.
Luci was not the most cerebral of poets. She was more of a psalmist—writing in a spirit of attentiveness and delight toward whatever was immediately before her. Yet poets of very different styles revered her work. The same is true of Gregory Wolfe, founder of Image Journal, who has spoken of her as something like a guardian angel or patron saint of the journal. Image simply would not exist without her. She was instrumental in helping that first issue come into being.
Like Mary Oliver, she was a poet whom beginners could love from the very first encounter, without needing specialized training to enter what was happening on the page. That made her an extraordinary encourager of new poets. Whenever we appeared at their doorstep—often with very little notice—she was delighted, not because she saw herself as some formal mentor, but because she simply could not wait to talk about these things with people who understood them.
Jeffrey: One of the great joys of our marriage has been watching Luci welcome Anne as a kindred spirit. I once brought a couple of my creative writing students to her house. One of them had previously thought of Luci almost as a stained-glass-window icon of poetry. To leave that house, that dinner table, with Luci now on a first-name basis—as a real, living kindred spirit—is something that young poet will never forget. I know it still shapes what she writes today.
Radix: In general, I am always curious about people’s personality. The one time I saw Luci in person was when Malcolm Guite was giving the Lang Lectures at Regent College. He invited her to read one of her poems, and when she walked in, my goodness, she seemed almost to flow to the stage and to the front. She immediately had everyone’s attention. This was around 2019, so she would already have been in her nineties, and yet there was such command of the room—her voice, the way she read, the sheer presence of her. It all felt almost regal.
But I have also heard that while she certainly had a gentler side, she could be rather spicy when the moment called for it?
Anne: Oh, absolutely. One of the first times we spent significant time with her at the Glen Workshop, she had just gotten a new tattoo—in her seventies.
Radix: [Laughter] Oh, wow, a tattoo!
Anne: And not even her first. This one was a dogwood blossom on her upper arm. Someone asked whether it had hurt, and she said, “It was a little painful. It stung, and it tickled a little bit.” Then she gave this wonderfully mischievous grin and said, “and I rather liked that.” The first time we met her there, she was also on crutches—she had just injured herself bungee jumping, also in her seventies. That really was Luci.
J & A: We first attended one of her poetry readings in Seattle in the late 1990s, at a Barnes & Noble bookstore. Afterward, we introduced ourselves, and she immediately gave us her full attention—extraordinary eye contact, genuine enthusiasm. Then in 2004 we went to our first Glen Workshop in Santa Fe, where she seemed almost like the queen of the event. At one meal we mentioned that we liked to take short writing retreats in Bellingham and asked whether she knew of any places to stay.
Without hesitation she said, “Why don’t you simply come up once a month and move into the lower level of our house?” That kind of hospitality was off the charts. We were never able to go monthly, but we went often—sometimes two or three times a year—and over the next twenty-five years John and Luci simply became family to us. A good portion of Jeffrey’s first novel and quite a few of Anne’s poems were actually written in the lower level of that lakeside house.
Jeffrey: Anyway, one day we arrived and Luci could hardly wait to show us her first black leather motorcycle jacket. She ran out of the room and returned wearing it, absolutely delighted. I said, “It’s really too bad you don’t have a motorcycle.” And she replied, “No, but I do have an exercise bike.” So I ended up taking photographs of her in dark sunglasses and the leather jacket, gripping the handlebars of the exercise bike, pedaling away and pointing dramatically into the distance. Those photographs are priceless to us. And yes—she was very much a personality. She also had an extraordinary ability to make Eugene Peterson blush. She could stand at a microphone, make some teasing remark, and Eugene would turn purple. There was something about her wit and playfulness that disarmed people.
Radix: Were there other pastors or church figures she influenced?
J & A: Yes—several come to mind. She was very close to the rector at St. Paul’s in Bellingham, though the name escapes us at the moment. She also had deep ties to The Chrysostom Society, of which she was a founding member. There were many pastors, writers, and spiritual leaders in that circle—people like Lauren Winner, Bill Griffin, Harold Fickett, and others. But perhaps more importantly, what defined her theological posture was not simply who she knew, but the breadth of her welcome. Almost every time we visited, conversations would turn to the life of the church. Again and again, questions of inclusion and exclusion surfaced.
They were deeply troubled by anything that suggested not you at the table. Because they themselves embodied hospitality so fully, they believed welcome was central to the gospel. That is one reason they found such a home at St. Paul’s in Bellingham. Questions of social justice, care for the vulnerable, and the health of the church were always near the front of their minds. And though these themes may not always appear explicitly in her poetry, the wide embrace of the world in her poems reflects the same posture toward people.
She was also thoroughly steeped in Scripture. Many of her poems carry biblical echoes that may not immediately announce themselves, but if you asked her, she could often quote the psalm or passage that had been quietly working beneath the poem. Scripture was never separate from how she saw the world. She also spoke often of being mentored by Clyde Kilby at Wheaton College, and one senses how formative that must have been. She was deeply at ease among great minds and great artists, whether theologians, novelists, or musicians.
Jeffrey: I still remember a photograph from the Glen Workshop of her approaching Linford Detweiler from the band Over the Rhine after a concert with this unmistakable fan-girl glow on her face. Linford later said the privilege was entirely his.
J & A: And yet perhaps the image that remains with us most vividly comes from the close of the Glen Workshop each summer. After the final concert and worship service, artists would come forward for blessing. Two or three poets stood at the front with a bowl of oil, and people would line up to receive an anointing and a word spoken over their work. For us, that was the high point of the year. We measured our lives by it: the days after the blessing and the days approaching it. And we always wanted to be in Luci’s line. To have her anoint our foreheads with the sign of the cross and bless our work was something we never took lightly. It was among the most sacred moments of our year.
One of the greatest privileges of our lives was the summer we were invited to stand beside her and participate in blessing the rest of the gathering. At the end, we turned and blessed one another. That felt profoundly moving. We truly wish everyone could have had that experience of her.
Radix: I so deeply appreciate the stories and memories you’ve shared. It helps to paint quite a lovely portrait. Let me ask one more thing. Sometimes I ask this in interviews, and people occasionally hear it as triumphalistic, which is not at all what I mean. So I’ll simply ask you both: Was Luci hopeful? Not naïvely optimistic, not in some cheap or floaty way, but in a deeper sense. Someone once told me she was—“a little too hopeful” and I found myself resisting that. Mary Kenagy Mitchell, the executive editor of Image said something similar when I was talking with her—that Luci’s hope was rooted in trust. I’m curious how you would put it.
J & A: Luci was deeply hopeful. But she was also wide awake. She fully acknowledged darkness and evil in the world. Her hope was rooted in an absolute faith in the goodness of God and in God’s love for creation. That was what moved her. And if anyone thought she was too hopeful, the real question is: hopeful about what? In her final years, she often spoke with visible grief about the world around her. At times there was a sense that things were falling apart beyond repair. But the frame was always far larger than the immediate moment—larger than the nation, larger even than the church as we presently know it.
God’s grace was always the frame around everything. She could be deeply dismayed by the daily news, and yet she would return to paying attention to the small things, which in turn reminded her of the great things. She was precisely the kind of person you wanted to be near in the middle of all this.
Radix: Oh, I love that—especially that line: God’s grace is the frame. Any final thoughts? Anything you wish people knew more fully about Luci?
J & A: One thing that comes to mind is that she was capable of strengthening our faith with only two words: “I’ll drive.”
Radix:[Laughter]
J & A: God bless her—she did not drive very often. We can vividly remember every occasion we found ourselves in the car with Luci at the wheel, if only because of how suddenly and deeply invested in prayer we became. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that she was noticing every little thing except the road. But truly, we shared many wonderful road trips with her and with John, and remain deeply grateful for them.
And then there are the final days. We were blessed—and we use that word carefully—to see her just a few days before she passed. We drove up to Bellingham and visited her in the hospital. Her three daughters were there in the room. By that point, Luci had begun to struggle with language and memory, and yet she introduced us to each of her daughters one by one, emphasizing their creative gifts. Almost like a talk-show host introducing honored guests, she would say, “This is my daughter, and this is what she does.” We were very much the guests in the room, and she remained, unmistakably, the host.
The last poem we ever heard her recite—and she still recited poetry, even then—was from the book Beastly Boys & Ghastly Girls. We cannot recall the exact title, but it involved a boy running from a tiger. It was not a short poem. She would recite part of it, drift off to sleep, and then awaken and continue exactly where she had left off. One of her daughters quietly said, “She’s been doing this.” Somehow she had tapped into something memorized from earlier years. It was a holy moment. Then, as we realized we should probably leave and give her more time alone with her daughters, she wanted to bless us.
Borrowing a line often used by Garrison Keillor, she said: “Do good work.” We began to leave the room. And just as the door was closing, we heard her say, “That was fun.” That was the last thing we heard. That was our farewell. And somehow, it was exactly right. For that, and for all the stories and wisdom and memories we carry, we remain profoundly thankful. It was all part of her generosity.
Radix: This has been truly wonderful—to hear these stories from people who knew her and lived within that orbit of friendship. It feels as though, through people like Luci, one glimpses something of the divine character. To know someone like Luci is to encounter a particular facet of grace—a way of seeing, a way of blessing, a way of inhabiting the world. So I’m ever so grateful to you both for sharing these memories and reflections.
J & A: Thank you so much for asking us. It has been a privilege to speak about her. We are still, in some ways, in a state of disbelief that we were ever allowed to be part of that circle. So thank you—and thank you for sharing her with others in this way.