About the Author

Shirley Hershey Showalter (1948 - ) grew up on a Mennonite family farm near Lititz, Pennsylvania. The first person in her family to go to college, she eventually became the first woman president of Goshen College in Indiana, a national liberal arts college noted for its commitment to peace and international service learning. She joined the Fetzer Institute in 2004, a private operating foundation with this mission: "to foster awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in the emerging global community." In 2010 she became a full-time writer living in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She has won awards for excellence in each of the fields she entered: teaching, higher education, leadership, and writing. Her memoir "Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World" (September 19, 2013) tells the story of a little girl who dreamed big and was transformed by dreams much bigger than her own."I promise: you will be transported," says Bill Moyers of this memoir. Part Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, part Growing Up Amish, and part Little House on the Prairie, this book evokes a lost time, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, when a sheltered but feisty little girl entered a family and church caught up in the midst of the cultural changes of the 1950's and '60's. With gentle humor and clear-eyed affection, the author tells the story of her first encounters with the "glittering world" and her desire for "fancy" forbidden things she could see but not touch.