Lou Ella Hickman

Sister Lou Ella Hickman has a master’s in theology from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio and is a former teacher and librarian. She is a certified spiritual director as well as a poet and writer. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as America, First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and new verse news as well as in four anthologies: The Night’s Magician: Poems about the Moon, edited by Philip Kolin and Sue Brannan Walker; Down to the Dark River edited by Philip Kolin; Secrets edited by Sue Brannan Walker; and After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery for Life-Shattering Events, edited by Tom Lombardo. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017 and 2020.

Here in these poems, Sister Lou explores the vicissitudes of life with palpable grace. She brings light to the dark places and serves each reader a road, a map, a compass toward sweet peace. —Alice Faye Duncan

Publication Day Reading!

October 4, Friday, 8PM ET

Lou Ella Hickman reads from and discusses Writing the Stars: Poems

Register for free on ZOOM

Sister Lou Ella Hickman has written a remarkable book of poems about the women of the Bible—the holy, the unholy, and the wholly silent. The poems here are poignant monologues, penetrating meditations on these women's mea culpas, prayers, or perils to their souls' health. —Philip C. Kolin

Sample Poem

Praise for Writing the Stars

Here in these poems, Sister Lou explores the vicissitudes of life with palpable grace. She brings light to the dark places and serves each reader a road, a map, a compass toward sweet peace.

—Alice Faye Duncan, author of Coretta's Journey and This Train Is Bound for Glory

The poet’s job is to erase the imaginary line between the divine and the physical. Lou Ella Hickman does so with passion in this collection of poems that sing the infinite beauty of this finite and fallen world.

—Colleen Shaddox, activist and writer

As my students would say, “She doesn’t play.” Lou Ella Hickman’s collection, writing the stars, touches on topics that matter. No foolishness or triviality here. These poems walk us into cancer and the Shoah. These poems consider wildfires, slashed cotton bales, and nuns who served as Civil War nurses. We encounter the flight into Egypt, forgiveness of torturers, even “a hag of a woman” beside her Kentucky moonshine machinery. Yet while these poems carry true human weight, their lean simplicity gives them a brightness, a beauty, even a kindness that walks beside the reader as we consider their truth. Sr. Lou Ella is a necessary voice, a poet we need. 

—Joseph Ross, author of Crushed & Crowned and Raising King

In Writing the Stars, Sister Lou Ella Hickman offers a vibrant collection of poetry full of grit and grace. She is something like a wrangler corralling wild mustangs, whispering eternal truths about the everydayness of life's difficult moments. Her poetry forges a peaceful partnership between reader and muse and tradition. The alluded violence in her lines gives way to something satisfactory, something holy.

—Ken Hada, author of Come Before Winter

Praise for she: robed and wordless

These terse little poems are often bright nuggets of insight into the psyches not only of the Biblical women who speak through this poet’s imagination, but they are also deep insights into our own psyches. Although the voices imagined here are the voices of many women from the Bible, the truths revealed are universal.  

—David Bottoms, former Georgia Poet Laureate and author of We Almost Disappear

If Sister Lou Ella Hickman had not found her voice before writing this collection of poetry, she certainly found it in the writing. Through imaginative contemplation, she offers a panorama of encounters with scriptural or contemporary women—women who have been told to keep their clothes on (or off) and remain quiet. This is a most approachable collection of poetry. It is poetry to be befriended, poetry with which to sup, and poetry with which to feel your heart burn. 

—Dr. Marlene Marburg, PhD, poet, spiritual director and formator

In she: robed and wordless, Sister Lou Ella invites us to ponder the workings of God in the lives of biblical women―many familiar, others more obscure―all touched by grace and mystery in the encounter with the divine.

—Anthony Schueller, Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, Editor of Emmanuel Magazine

Each poem in this collection is a jewel. Hickman lays bare sentiments appropriate to the biblical scene sketched. We come to know these women, whether they are named or unnamed, because the sentiments are familiar to us. But is not that what good poetry does—introduce us to strangers in whom we discover ourselves?

—Dianne Bergant, CSA, former Carroll Stuhlmueller, CP, Distinguished Professor Emerita of Old Testament Studies at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago

Sister Lou Ella Hickman has written a remarkable book of poems about the women of the Bible—the holy, the unholy, and the wholly silent. The poems here are poignant monologues, penetrating meditations on these women's mea culpas, prayers, or perils to their souls' health. Eve laments her "weakness and everything in between"; Delilah is shadowed by "the dark orchard between [her] thighs"; Lot's daughter "lives in whispers"; Magdalen "heard inner music"; and the Blessed Mother's words are "like mirrors,/ reflecting both surprise and treasure." Sister Lou Ella is both gifted poet and wise theologian. I rejoice in her achievement.

—Philip C. Kolin, University Distinguished Professor, University of Southern Mississippi