Recorded Sunday, October 9 from 2:30-4 p.m. at Hudson Opera House, 327 Warren Street, Hudson, by Chad Weckler of Mary Johnson & Dara Lurie speaking as part of ArtsWalk.

Mary John­son is the au­thor of "An Un­quench­able Thirst: Fol­low­ing Mother Teresa in Search of Love, Ser­vice, and an Au­then­tic Life," a mem­oir of her twenty years as a Mis­sion­ar­ies of Char­ity, the group com­monly known as the Sis­ters of Mother Teresa of Cal­cutta. John­son has a BA in Eng­lish from Lamar Uni­ver­sity and an MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing at God­dard Col­lege. Johnson serves as Cre­ative Di­rec­tor of A Room of Her Own Foun­da­tion’s re­treats and is a fel­low of the Mac­Dow­ell Colony.

Dara Lurie, who now lives in Columbia County, lived in West Berlin in the 1980s, where she tended bar, wrote and per­formed in the­ater while liv­ing in dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties of squat­ters, Green Party ac­tivists, jour­nal­ists, teach­ers and so­cial work­ers. "Great Space of De­sire: Writ­ing for Per­sonal Evo­lu­tion" is Dara’s first book, a mem­oir about race, bal­let, the Berlin Wall and heal­ing per­sonal dys­func­tion through cre­ative in­tel­li­gence.