Ruth Ozeki, New York Times bestselling author, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest, whose books have garnered international acclaim for their ability to integrate issues of science, technology, religion, environmental politics, and global pop culture, will share her story and insights in conversation with the Rev. Matthew Ichihashi Potts, Ph.D ’13, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals in the Faculty of Divinity, Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church, and Professor Duncan Ryūken Williams Ph.D '00, scholar, writer and Zen Buddhist priest. 

Ozeki's new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, published by Viking in September 2021, tells the story of a young boy who, after the death of his father, starts to hear voices and finds solace in the companionship of his very own book.

Her novels, My Year of Meats (1998), All Over Creation (2003), A Tale for the Time Being (2013) and The Book of Form and Emptiness (2022) have been translated and published in over thirty countries. Her third novel, A Tale for the Time Being, won the LA Times Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Book of Form and Emptiness is the winner of the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction as well as the 22nd Annual Massachusetts Book Award, the BC Yukon Book Prize, and the Julia Ward Howe Prize for Fiction.

Her work of personal non-fiction, The Face: A Time Code (2016), was published by Restless Books as part of their groundbreaking series called The Face.

Ozeki's documentary and dramatic independent films, including Halving the Bones, have been shown on PBS, at the Sundance Film Festival, and at colleges and universities across the country.

A longtime Buddhist practitioner, Ruth was ordained in 2010 and is affiliated with the Brooklyn Zen Center and the Everyday Zen Foundation.

She is now Professor Emerita of English Language & Literature at Smith College, where she was the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities. A dual citizen of Canada and the United States, she divides her time between Western Massachusetts, New York City, and British Columbia, Canada.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Her books will be on sale in the church before the lecture.

The William Belden Noble Lectures were established in 1898 by Nannie Yulee Noble in memory of her husband. According to the terms of the bequest: “The object of the Founder of the Lectures is to continue the mission of her husband, whose supreme desire was to extend the influence of Jesus as ‘the Way, the Truth, and the Life,’ and to illustrate and enforce the words of Jesus — ‘I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.’ The Founder has in view the presentation of the personality of Jesus as given in the New Testament, or unfolded in the history of the Christian Church, or illustrated in the inward experience of His followers, or as the inspiration to Christian Missions for the conversion of the world. The scope of the Lectures is believed to be as wide as the highest interests of humanity.”