Diane Glass

Diane Glass shares her own stories—through poetry, through memoir, through teaching. She also listens with compassion to the stories of others, helping them see the threads of wisdom, meaning, joy, and loss that define a life.

Whether she is rejoicing in the natural beauty of a prairie or dancing the rumba, Diane infuses that same energy and imagination into her writing, speaking to universal themes of longing, love, and discovery.

The Heart Hungers for Wildness, Diane’s new book of poetry, recounts through verse a life well-lived. Combining a writer’s appreciation for detail and a spiritual director’s ability to probe for depth, she brings new appreciation for experiences as diverse as ministering to people through soup-making to traversing Native American lands, as distinct as discovering the joys of grandmothering to sinking her feet into the soil of her native Iowa.

Her memoir, This Need to Dance: A Life of Rhythm and Resilience, recounts how growing up with spina bifida, addressing breast cancer and losing a stepson prepared her spiritually to guide others through life change and difficulty.

Praise for The Heart Hungers for Wildness:

"This stirring book is a culmination and celebration of a lifetime of paying attention to what truly matters and endures. In exploring myriad dimensions of our yearnings, loves, and innate wildness, Glass continually lands on language that helps readers better understand their own life passages and possibilities. Along the way, she brings great clarity, compassion, and curiosity to the angles of grief and change, loss and sweetness, and youth and aging of a life in the music and imagery of small moments that tell larger stories. From the soup that has and will save the world to the land that will talk to us if we listen, there is a well of generosity of spirit these poems to feed the wild hearts of all readers."

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Kansas Poet Laureate Emerita

"In one of the most moving poems in this powerful book, a woman crosses a swaying bridge over a vast canyon, water rushing below. The narrator drops her fear and reaches the other side safely. She leaves behind her ill-health and past traumas and embraces a new wildness in her life. Every page of this finely-wrought collection explores this journey through the unknown, through pain to a transformative spiritual stillness. A remarkable debut for a contemplative poet of great depth."

Mary Swander, author of The Girls on the Roof

"One of the many things I love about this slim volume are the clever ordering of chapters that clusters the poems into three themes: hunger, heart, wildness. And how the themes circle and flow within the chapters, and page to page. Her subjects range from the simple to the simply unimaginable. Her verses call us to pay attention, sometimes with proposed solutions placed cleverly in plain sight right before us. As if that’s how it works in the real world."

Terri Mork Speirs, Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center

Praise for "This Need to Dance: A Life of Rhythm and Resilience:

Diane's story left me speechless! It offers hope to every parent of a child with special needs. Although born with spina bifida, Diane broke through her limitations to live a full life with a career, family and numerous interests and involvements. Her experiences allowed me to look at life through the lens of an adolescent, like my daughter who has spina bifida, and to see my actions from her perspective. I also found myself connecting with her parents' story, as they struggled to care for her at a time when resources and information were limited. I will read this book again and again and hope my daughter does as well. We all can learn from Diane's journey to dance into the light of courage and resilience of the human spirit.

Megan Sorensen

President, Spina Bifida Association of America

Diane Glass generously and humbly allows the reader to enter the secret rooms of her life. I was deeply moved by this brave and inspiring memoir. This Need to Dance led me to reach into a profound place of the soul. The author's beautifully written, powerful story vibrates with a constant rhythm of honesty and hope, insight and wisdom.

Joyce Rupp, spiritual guide and author

of Fly While You Still Have Wings and other award winning publications.

"This Need to Dance" is an important addition to the literature about the lived experience of individuals with spina bifida. This book will be an invaluable resource not only to them and to many others with a chronic health limiting condition, but also to health care professionals who seek to provide comprehensive and compassionate care to those with such health care challenges. In a vulnerable and authentic voice, Diane Glass shows persistence and creativity in seeking solutions that go well beyond Western medicine, while at the same time conveying gratitude for life and the opportunity to live life fully. It is rare to learn the "secrets" of illness and disease in such a public venue. This book breaks down barriers and brings light to aspects of personhood and sexuality that have previously been secluded in darkness. What a gift.

Dr. Norma J. Hirsch. MD

Des Moines University

This story of discoveries speaks to Diane Glass's gifts -- clarity, deep strength and resilience. We watch those qualities emerge to guide her through decades of dealing with the ugliness that is spina bifida and the fear that is cancer. From creating the mystic beauty of Ravel on her Steinway to considering a life without dancing -- from the confines of structured religion to finally finding a comfortable Jesus who'd always been waiting -- we're compelled to walk along on this most unusual journey. Profoundly honest, this private woman shares the river and all its tributaries that carried her physically and spiritually to acceptance, purpose and joy.

Mary Kay Shanley

Iowa Author of the Year

Co-Facilitator of Women's Writing Retreats

Diane Glass weaves a spiritual memoir that is deeply human and invites us into our own humanness. She caresses the details of a journey through huge challenges including spina bifida and breast cancer, yet all along she opens up to the rhythms of her own life. In this brave and compelling memoir she returns home to the glorious wisdom of seeing the body as a gift and in turn the reader is invited to do the same. Broken open to beauty in the midst of difficulty, her words embody the reality that we are not alone.

Celeste Snowber, PhD

Dancer/Scholar/Educator

Author of Embodied Prayer

This beautifully written book, This Need to Dance, will give you courage for the journey, whether you are facing a debilitating physical or mental condition, or the normal challenges of daily life. In this account of her struggles over the years with spina bifida and, later, cancer, Diane Glass shows us what resilience is all about: searching deep inside yourself for strengths you did not know you had; being open to unexpected gifts, from unexpected sources; accepting with gratitude the help of those who travel with you; and keeping a gentle sense of humor along the way.

Nancy L. Jones, Ph.D.

Director, Writing Resource Center

University of Iowa College of Law

Personal stories can touch us in deeply meaningful ways. In many ways, Diane's story is every woman's story. While many aspects of it are unique to her, we will recognize the common threads of other themes that will intersect with our own experiences and understandings. There is much learned from the honesty and vulnerability with which Diane shares. Hers is a story about learning to listen to "the still small voice within" and to trust the guidance it held to lead her to the truth and freedom that are among the gifts of healing and reclaiming one's original wholeness.

Kathy Reardon

Holistic nurse and spiritual director