Overview

•  Published by Guideposts Books, 2006 and Penguin, 2007

“The question of “Who am I?” reverberates quietly in these pages as does a willingness to be known.”

This evocative collection offers readers an intimate glimpse into the early years of Sue Monk Kidd’s journey as both writer and spiritual seeker. The book is compiled from a wide range of inspirational and spiritual writings published over a dozen years in Guideposts magazine, Weavings, and other publications.

Organized around thirteen motifs, such as Awareness, Simplicity of Spirit, Compassion, Severe Grace and Letting Go, the book is interwoven with thoughtful essays on the spiritual life, reflections on a stream of ordinary, sacred moments, and personal stories about the author’s quest for meaning, her years as a young mother and a nurse, her marriage, travels and childhood.

Firstlight draws readers to embrace their own moments of awakening and renews the mystery of being alive in a vividly sacred world.

Praise

"Thoughtful, moving, often luminous meditations on faith, family, death, and love; on compassion, solitude and grace."
 —Booklist

"These essays point to Kidd’s desire to pay attention to her soul, a “repository of the inner Divine, the truest part of us,” from which so much of her writing sprang. The subjects have universal appeal… Kidd’s lovely prose, passion for the spiritual life, and early instincts for telling a compelling story should help this book attract a wide readership.”
—Publishers Weekly

Excerpt

From the Introduction

When GuidepostsBooks first approached me about collecting my early inspirational writings into one volume, I was ambivalent. I had no idea then what a remarkable gift this book would become for me. I was only imagining how humbling it could be to read my work from those first, developmental years. What fifty-seven-year-old writer wants to go back and read what she wrote when she was thirty years old? I imagined it would be a little like looking at old photographs of myself in a forgotten album and being appalled at my hairstyles, wondering why I’d chosen a bouffant or why bell-bottoms had seemed like a good idea. I thought about the stories and meditations I’d composed all those years ago on a portable typewriter in a corner of the family den as I jumped up every five minutes to tend to my toddlers. Would I read them and wince at certain sentences or wonder why I’d thought it was a good idea to write about the death of my daughter’s goldfish or an encounter with an old woman on a sand dune?

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Overview

•  Originally published by HaperOne in 1990

This newly reissued edition is Sue Monk Kidd’s inspiring autobiographical account of personal pain, spiritual awakening, and divine grace. Blending her own experiences with an intimate grasp of spirituality, the author relates the passionate and moving tale of her spiritual crisis, when life seemed to have lost meaning and her longing for a hasty escape from the pain yielded to a discipline of "active waiting." She compares her experience to the formative processes inside a chrysalis, charting the passages of her descent and ascent while offering wisdom and hope for the upheavals in our lives.

Praise

"Grounded in personal experience and bolstered with classic spiritual disciplines and Scripture, this book offers an alternative to fast-fix spirituality."
—Bookstore Journal

"Sue Monk Kidd combines profound wisdom in a most readable and anecdotal style. Like Einstein, she shows us that great truth is also “simple and beautiful!"
—Richard Rohr, OFM, author, Radical Grace

"A well-crafted gem. The reader emerges enriched from joining Kidd in her journey."
—Librarian’s World

"A joy to read. Here we have an honest and healing book which speaks to us out of both direct personal experience and a knowledge and sympathy for a long and deep spiritual tradition. The author moves away from the shallows of ‘self-help’ and cheap religion to the depths of holiness and transformation."
—Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and author, Soul Making

"As I read her book, Sue Monk Kidd became a companion to me. I love having her walk with me on my journey."
—Eugene Peterson, author, Living the Message

"Kidd’s writing is vivid... alive. She does all of us a favor by being very aware of the processes within her own life and crystalizing them in words and images which can help us."
—En Christo

"A deeply transforming book in the “Merton” tradition."
—Monos

Excerpt

Overhead a thickening of clouds wreathed everything in grayness. It was February, when the earth of South Carolina seems mired in the dregs of winter. I had been walking for miles; I don’t know how many. I could feel neither my toes inside my shoes, nor the wind on my face. I could feel nothing at all but an intense aching in my soul. For some months I had been lost in a baffling crisis of spirit. Back in the autumn I had awakened to a growing darkness and cacophony, as if something in my depths were crying out. A whole chorus of voices. Orphaned voices.

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Overview

•  Originally published by HarperOne, 1996
•  Special 20th anniversary edition with a new introduction from the author, 2016

To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the book’s publication, this special edition has been released with a brand new Introduction by the author. In the last two decades, this groundbreaking memoir has become a classic work of feminine spiritual discovery that has impacted hundreds of thousands of readers, and is as compelling today as when it was first published. The genesis of the author’s bestselling fiction lies within the journey described in these pages.

“I was amazed to find that I had no idea how to unfold my spiritual life in a feminine way. I was surprised, and, in fact, a little terrified, when I found myself in the middle of a feminist spiritual reawakening."
—Sue Monk Kidd

For years, Sue Monk Kidd was a conventionally religious woman. Then, in the late 1980s, she experienced an unexpected awakening and began a journey toward a feminine spirituality. With the exceptional storytelling skills that have helped make her name, Kidd tells her very personal story of the fear, anger, healing, freedom, and empowerment she experienced on the path toward the wholeness that many women have lost within faith traditions. From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore, to monastery retreats, to rituals in the caves of Crete, she reveals a new level of feminine spiritual consciousness for all women, one that has the power to transform in the most positive ways every fundamental relationship in a woman's life—most notably her relationship with herself.

Reading Groups

Awakening
Initiation
Grounding
Empowerment

View the reading group guide
Tenth Anniversary Interview

Praise

"A masterpiece of women’s wisdom."
—Christiane Northrup, M.D. author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

"A graceful account of awakening and transformation."
—Library Journal

"The author’s journey to capture her feminine soul and live authentically from that soul makes a fascinating, well-researched and well-written story... A hopeful call to self-discovery."
—Publishers Weekly

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Excerpt

It was autumn, and everything was turning loose. I was running errands that afternoon. Rain had fallen earlier, but now the sun was out, shining on the tiny beads of water that clung to the trees and sidewalks. I parked in front of the drugstore where my daughter, Ann, fourteen, had an after-school job. Leaping a puddle, I went inside.

I spotted her right away kneeling on the floor in the toothpaste section, stocking a bottom shelf. I was about to walk over and say hello when I noticed two middle-aged men walking along the aisle toward her. They looked like everybody’s father. They had moussed hair and wore knit sport shirts the color of Easter eggs, the kind of shirts with tiny alligators sewn at the chest. It was a detail I would remember later as having ironic symbolism.

My daughter did not see them coming. Kneeling on the floor, she was intent on getting the boxes of Crest lined up evenly. The men stopped, peered down at her. One man nudged the other. He said, “Now that's how I like to see a woman— on her knees.”

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Overview

•  Published by Viking, 2009
•  New York Times Bestseller
•  Co-authored with Sue’s daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor

In this wise and engrossing dual memoir, Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann chronicle their travels together through Greece, Turkey, and France at a time when each was on a quest to redefine herself and rediscover one another.

Sue, newly aware of aging and caught in a creative vacuum, struggles to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel and to navigate the threshold into her fifties. Ann, heartbroken and lost, grapples with the classic question of what to do with her life. In voices candid and lyrical, this modern-day Demeter and Persephone explore a rich array of inspiring figures and sacred sites in Athens, Eleusis, Paris, Ephesus, Rocamadour, and places in between. They also give voice to a moving transformation of that most protean of human connections: the bond of mothers and daughters.

Praise

"Thoughtful, honest, and uplifting."
—Los Angeles Times

"A stunning account of inner journeys, separate and intertwined."
—Booklist

"Any mother or daughter would enjoy and relate to the touching struggle of developing a close relationship as adult women."
—Associated Press

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Excerpt

Sue
National Archeological Museum- Athens

Sitting on a bench in the National Archeological Museum in Greece, I watch my twenty-two-year-old daughter, Ann, angle her camera before a marble bas-relief of Demeter and Persephone unaware of the small ballet she’s performing– her slow, precise steps forward, the tilt of her head, the way she dips to one knee as she turns her torso, leaning into the sharp afternoon light. The scene reminds me of something, a memory maybe, but I can’t recall what.  I only know she looks beautiful and impossibly grown, and that for reasons not clear to me I’m possessed by an acute feeling of loss.

It’s the summer of 1998, a few days before my fiftieth birthday. Ann and I have been in Athens a whole twenty-seven hours, a good portion of which I’ve spent lying awake in a room in the Hotel Grande Bretagne, waiting for blessed daylight. I tell myself the bereft feeling that washed over me means nothing– I’m jet-lagged, that’s all. But that doesn’t feel particularly convincing.

I close my eyes and even in the tumult of the museum where there seems to be ten tourists per square inch, I know the feeling is actually everything. It is the undisclosed reason I’ve come to the other side of the world with my daughter. Because in a way which makes no sense, she seems lost to me now. Because she is grown and a stranger. And I miss her almost violently.

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Overview

• Published by Knopf October 21, 2025
• Instant National Bestseller

Part memoir, part philosophical investigation, part advice to aspiring writers, Writing

Creativity and Soul is a touchstone for the spirit, a work of profound pilgrimage that

will be of value to aspiring writers and anyone who hungers to lead a deeper and

more fulfilling life. “If you encounter writing infused with soul, you know it,” writes

Sue Monk Kidd. It feeds you somewhere inside . . . our internal revolutions, our

reach for our true selves, our struggle to write unsayable things with brave voices

comes about through a succession of brief, amazing moments. This is a book about

writing that is so much more—an exhortation to dive deeply into the creative

instinct, whatever form it happens to take, to nourish the imagination and cultivate

a practice of attention to the mysteries and yearnings of our own hearts.

Everything readers love about Sue Monk Kidd is in these pages: the warmth,

the fierce intelligence, the wit, and the search for beauty and meaning and wonder

in the world through the sacred act of storytelling.

Praise

“Part memoir, part words of encouragement for anyone who seeks to do creative work, this is a book that unfolds like the best conversation with the wisest friend you’ve ever had.”
- The Boston Globe

”A beautiful ode to creativity and the inner world of the writer and artist. This book offers a gentle journey through many of Sue Monk Kidd’s own inspirations. I read it in a single sitting and came away both inspired and deeply moved."
-Emma Gannon

"One expects to walk away from this title a little more in tune with the burning core of our own artistic selves, and a wish to share it with the world"
-Lit Hub

“VERDICT - Lyrical and poetic. Kidd’s monograph is a welcome addition for aspiring writers.”
-Library Journal (starred review)

"A gorgeous memoir of the creative life, designed to bring out the writer's voice in all of us."
—Kirkus (starred review)

"A lyrical read and a generous companion for writers especially those seeking depth in the process."
-Booklist

"The book flows easily, its rapid-fire chapters interspersing writing tips with pilgrimages to the homes of literary role models, examples from her books and others', and inspirational quotations. A trove for Kidd's fans, this accessible toolkit for budding authors is also suited to readers of Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic."
-Shelf Awareness

“Warm and inspiring . . . Sue Monk Kidd is a treasure, and I feel lucky to have this book, a blend of memoir and thoughts on craft and writing life, to keep on my desk and read early mornings and late nights as I write something new.”
-Megha Majumdar, author of A Guardian and a Thief

“A beautiful, generous gift to aspiring writers!”
-Lily King, author of Heart the Lover

“This is a magnificent book that will enrich your life whether you are a writer or not. Sue Monk Kidd is a treasure. I hope you'll read it and press it into the hands of the people you love.”
-Dani Shapiro, author of Signal Fires

“A lovely read for anyone exploring creativity as a way to come to know yourself.”
-Meg Waite Clayton, bestselling author of Typewriter Beach

“Her exploration of art, humanity, and the mystical realms between is a must for all writers, creatives, and seekers . . . This book is a portal to greater things. As ever, Sue is guiding us toward them.”
-Sarah McCoy, New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of Whatever Happened to Lori Lovely?

“This one is phenomenal. It is a primer for everyone who ever loved to read or loved to write.”
-Adriana Trigiani, author of The View From Lake Como

“For all who are seeking creativity within themselves, for all who perhaps feel they have something to write, something to say to their families, the world, even themselves, this book encourages you, inspires you, to take that journey . . . If you are a writer, or want to be, this book is for you.”
-Mary Alice Monroe, author of Where the Rivers Merge

“Sue Monk Kidd’s beautiful memoir is a must read.”
-Anne Burt, author of The Dig

“A deeply personal book about a life in writing — creativity, spirituality, and growth, in Sue's unmistakably wise, generous voice.”
-Christina Baker Kline, author of The Exiles

“If you are writing something or creating something, if you want to create something, if you are feeling stuck or are doubting yourself, this book is such a helpful companion. Sentences like this one are fuel that can keep you going as you slog through the thickets of creativity: "The common heart is the place of our deep and shared belonging. As a writer, I believe in this place. I find meaning in the hope that a writer's work can be a portal into it."
-Elizabeth Lesser, author of Cassandra Speaks

“A terrific book about writing a book, along the lines of Bird by Bird. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to write a book, is writing a book, or has written a book.”
-Fiona Davis, author of The Stolen Queen

“An absolute gem. The way this resonates with what l experienced in my own writing process of Awake. . . . Sue beautifully expresses how writing is a powerful tool for our self-discovery and personal transformation.”
-Jen Hatmaker, author of Awake

“A masterful book—my new bible for creativity and soul.
-Jennifer Rudolph Walsh

“One of the greatest voices of our time.”
-Kristy Woodson Harvey, author of Beach House Rules

“Beautiful. I hope everyone picks up a copy to read about the connection between creativity & spirituality. Sue is a wonderful woman, who has many insights on life and love.”
-Lisa See, author of Lady Tan’s Circle of Women

“A luminous meditation on making art and making a life. Sue's work has been a compass for me, and this book points true north.”
-Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife

Excerpt

When I was a young writer of thirty and just setting out, I traveled to North Carolina to hear Maya Angelou give a lecture on writing. I sat on the sixth row of the large auditorium while the tall woman with the powerful presence spoke about the cost of carrying untold stories inside, about wielding a voice in the world, about writing that brings the reader alive. Her words stirred up every longing I had. I sat there like a snow globe turned upside down.

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