Dr. Carmen Acevedo Butcher, professor of English and Scholar-in-Residence at Shorter University, was awarded as Georgia Author of the Year for her book “The Cloud of Unknowing with the Book of Privy Counsel.” The award was presented to Butcher at the 46th Annual Georgia Author of the Year ceremony held last week at Kennesaw State University. Butcher’s award was in the creative non-fiction category.

The book is a 21st century translation of a medieval manuscript comprised of letters written by an anonymous Christian teacher to his student, explains Butcher.

“The book is a rainmaker for anyone whose soul has ever felt as dry as a bone," Butcher said. "Its nameless author was a gifted teacher. Page after page, he patiently explains what contemplative prayer is and how it can end any spiritual drought - shortages of love, low levels of humility, and absence of peace. Through practical spiritual exercises that he calls the 'cloud of unknowing' and the 'cloud of forgetting,' he teaches us to pray without ceasing and shows us that a dialogue with mystery is not only possible but is in fact, ‘the work of the soul that most pleases God’.”

Butcher’s latest award is one of many on an already extensive list of achievements. As the author of numerous books, scholarly articles and international lectures, Butcher was named the 2006 Carnegie Foundation Professor of the Year for Georgia and received the 2007 President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship at Shorter University.

She has been a Fulbright scholar and lecturer twice. She was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea for the 2004-2005 academic year, and she was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of London from 1989-1991, conducting research in the British Library, the Bodleian and other Oxbridge libraries.