Kathleen Norris is the author of the 1993 bestseller Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. Her newest book, The Cloister Walk, is structured around two nine-month residencies at a Benedictine monastery. In it, she links the disparate worlds of 4th-century desert monks and modern-day Benedictines to epiphanies in the tiny South Dakota town where she and her husband moved in 1974. Renowned author Dr. Robert Coles lauded Norris's work in The New York Times Book Review: "Her writing is personal and epigrammatic—a series of short takes that ironically addresses the biggest subject matter possible: how one ought to live life and with what purposes in mind." Norris's narrative and lyrical poems have appeared in The New Yorker and the Paris Review.

This program was produced as part of the 1997 season of Racing Toward the Millennium: Voices from the American West in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.