Anne Lamott and Neal Allen Forum: Good Writing

Grace Cathedral, San Francisco

Join bestselling author Anne Lamott and writer and spiritual coach Neal Allen for an inspiring and entertaining conversation that will change the way you think about language. Drawing on their new book Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, they offer powerful techniques for transforming worthy sentences into unforgettable ones.

With humor, candor, and a touch of creative tension, Lamott and Allen explore how writing and language shape not only our creativity, but also our relationships and everyday lives. Bringing together Neal's finely honed insights from a career in journalism and business, and Anne's beloved wit and wisdom— familiar to readers of Bird by Bird and her many bestselling books —the two explore both the fundamentals and nuances of great prose, offering practical techniques, real-life examples, and an honest look at the writing process. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, as he hosts a lively dialogue with Lamott and Allen about their shared passion for better sentences and the deeper question beneath it: why certain words stay with us, echoing long after they are spoken or read. Even when they don't agree on every detail, their exchanges reveals a fresh perspective and a renewed sense of curiosity, generosity, and joy in writing. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on May 10, 2026. Give to Grace

You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member

Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join.

About the Guests

Neal Allen is a spiritual coach and writer. His wife, Anne Lamott, and he wrote Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences. Other books are Better Days: Tame Your Inner Critic, from Namaste Publishing (2023) and Shapes of Truth, which describes a recent, spectacular discovery about the human soul. Every once in a while a short story of his gets published. They've appeared in two Flash in the Attic anthologies that Amazon carries, and The MacGuffin. His literary heroes are all over the place: Faulkner, Henry Miller, Ishmael Reed, Virginia Woolf, Poe, Yeats, Olds, Dostoevsky come to mind. His spiritual heroes likewise: Lao Tzu, T.S. Eliot, Dogen, Jed McKenna, A.H. Almaas, Gurdjieff, Trungpa, Adyashanti, Patanjali, and whoever wrote the Gospels, Mahabharata, and early Buddhist discourses. More at shapesoftruth dot com.

Anne Lamott is the New York Times bestselling author of Help, Thanks, Wow; Small Victories; Stitches; Some Assembly Required; Grace (Eventually); Plan B; Traveling Mercies; Bird by Bird; Operating Instructions; Dusk, Night, Dawn; and Somehow: Notes on Love. Her most recent book is Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, co-written with her husband, Neal Allen. She is also the author of several novels, including Imperfect Birds and Rosie. A past recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inductee to the California Hall of Fame, she lives in Northern California. About the Moderator

The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner. About The Forum

The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum's host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. Learn more about The Forum here: gracecathedral.org/the-forum