In this episode, author David Guy and I discuss his spiritual journey from Presbyterianism it Zen Buddhism. He views both his writing and sitting practices as ways to connect with something greater than himself. His exploration of faith, miracles, and healing is reflected in his most recent novel, Hank Heals.
In David Guy’s sixth novel, Henry Wilder has returned to Durham, NC, and is unsuccessfully trying to establish a new Zen center there, when his ex-girlfriend Julie believes he has cured her recurring cancer with his touch and proclaims—to practically everyone she knows—that he has healing powers. Hank Heals is a lighthearted comedy about the way a spiritual teacher tries to empower his followers, but they invest him with all the power.
About David Guy
I was eleven years old when I first saw that there was something about language that fascinated me, fifteen when I decided—God help me—that I wanted to be a writer. Though I have worked in libraries and taught at various schools and in different capacities, writing has been my true vocation. In the decade beginning when I was 32, I published four novels, Football Dreams (1980), The Man Who Loved Dirty Books (1983), Second Brother (1985), and The Autobiography of My Body (1990). I also published articles in various publications during those years, and was active as a book reviewer.
In 1991, my wife dragged me to a class at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center and I discovered the spiritual practice that became central to my life. Since 1995 I have practiced with Josho Pat Phelan at the Chapel Hill Zen Center.
I worked with my first meditation teacher, Larry Rosenberg, on two books, Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation (1994) and Living in the Light of Death: On the Art of Being Truly Alive (2001). I wrote for various Buddhist publications during those years, and published The Red Thread of Passion: Spirituality and the Paradox of Sex (1999).
In 2001 I began working at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, teaching in both the MPP and Hart Leadership Programs. Working at Duke freed me to get back to narrative writing, and in 2007 I published Jake Fades: A Novel of Impermanence. In November of 2022 I’m publishing a new novel with the same narrator, Hank Heals: A Novel of Miracles. I’m at work on a third volume of the trilogy.
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