Last weekend, along with many other homecoming events, Goshen College reserved a time for alumni authors to sell books they had written. The six authors who hosted the event gathered in the Union Building with their publications, including poetry collections, memoirs and children’s picture books.

John D. Roth ’81, a professor emeritus of history, displayed his book, “A Mennonite College for Everyone (?): Goshen College and the Quest for Identity and Inclusion.” Roth’s book takes a look at the history of GC from 1960-2020. “Goshen has sort of prided itself on being progressive and inclusive. And yet, in those years, this struggle to be inclusive was always framed within the context of the Mennonite Church,” Roth said.

While Roth believes that GC has become more welcoming in recent years, he recognizes that it is hard to define true inclusivity. “Diversity always has limits,” he said. “A Mennonite college is not going to be welcoming to a KKK advocate. We will have points at which we say, ‘No, that goes too far,’” he said. “How do you define that?” His book, which was published in 2023, explores some of those ideas and how they are affecting GC.

Richard Stuckey ’66 celebrated his 60th anniversary of graduating this year. His memoir is titled “Embracing Life with Twists and Turns.”

“It was written primarily for my grandkids, so they know what their grandparents went through,” Stuckey said. “Three of the grandchildren have read it, and the fourth one said he’s too busy to read it right now. He’s got it on his shelf, but he’s got other books he wants to read first,” he said.

Stuckey said that this book was a long time in the making. He first wanted to write a book in 2005, but didn’t get words on the page until 2020, during the lockdown. “When COVID came, I said, ‘If I don’t do it now, I won’t do it.’” He wrote the entire manuscript in a period of about six months, and took another three to four months to gather all the photos. 

Stuckey’s life has taken him down many paths, including graduate school, working with the Ministry of Agriculture in Uruguay, a sabbatical in the Netherlands and a job on the Council for Agricultural Sciences and Technology. Stuckey is grateful for the journeys he took, and hopes that this book will keep his stories, as well as those of his parents and grandparents, alive.

While both of these books are for adult audiences, GC alumni have written many books for younger audiences as well.

Lisa Weaver ’92 is the author of many picture books, including “Stitch by Stitch,” “On the Zwieback Trail” and “Let the Children Come to Me,” which was co-written with Elizabeth Miller ’06, an assistant professor of history. Many of Weaver’s books are inspired by her Russian Mennonite heritage. “Stitch by Stitch” tells the story of a quilt being sewn, and “On the Zwieback Trail” is an Anabaptist-themed alphabet book, from “A for Anabaptist” to “Z for Zwieback.”

In addition to all of this prose, Jenna Wysong Filbrun ’06 attended the event with her poetry collection, titled, “Running Toward Water,” which was released earlier this year. Filbrun said that her poems are “heavily influenced by spirituality and the natural world.” She has been writing these poems for a long time. “This book in particular probably picks up on poems from the past 7 to 8 years,” Filbrun said.

Also featured at the event this weekend were Becky McLaughlin ’81, author of “Autotheory and Its Others” and “The Body in Theory: Essays after Lacan and Foucault,” and Jessica Baldanzi, GC English department chair and author of “Bodies and Boundaries in Graphic Fiction: Reading Female and Nonbinary Characters,” and “Ms. Marvel’s America: No Normal.”