Jnana Hodson’s career as a journalist took him far from his native Midwest over the past 50 years. His novels and poems chronicle much of that journey and its changing times.
One stop was a two-year residency in a yoga ashram, where he was given the name Jnana, usually pronounced JAH-nah, a Sanskrit word that becomes “gnosis” in Greek and “knowing” in English. Another was the interior desert of the Pacific Northwest, including the eruption of Mount St. Helens. After three decades in New Hampshire, he has downsized to a small fishing village with an active arts scene in Way Downeast Maine.
Along the way, he joined the Society of Friends, or Quakers, not knowing it had been the faith of his Hodson ancestors. Insights from his participation infuse his newest book, a unique history of the seventh oldest permanent settlement in the United States through the perspective of its Quaker Meeting, itself the seventh-oldest Friends body in the New World.