Scripted Language: Writing Is The Only Way I Know How To Pray

Helena Viramontes is the author of "Their Dogs Came with Them," a novel, and two previous works of fiction, "The Moths and Other Stories" and "Under the Feet of Jesus," a novel. Named a USA Ford Fellow in 2007 by United States Artists, she is also the recipient of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, a Sundance Institute Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Luis Leal Award. Viramontes, a professor of creative writing in the Department of English at Cornell, spoke at Sage Chapel on Nov. 11, 2009.