Over the past decade Dana Gioia has emerged as a compelling advocate of Christianity's continuing importance in contemporary culture. His incisive and arresting essays have examined the spiritual dimensions of art and the decisive role faith has played in the lives of artists. This new volume collects Gioia's essays on Christianity, literature, and the arts. His influential title essay ignited a national conversation about the role of Catholicism in American literature. Other pieces explore the often-harrowing lives of Christian poets and painters as well as contemplate scripture and modern martyrdom.

Dana Gioia's The Catholic Writer Today confronts the paradoxical fact that though Catholicism constitutes the largest religious and cultural group in the United States, Catholic writers are currently almost invisible in American public culture. After establishing a lucid definition of Catholic literature, Gioia examines the decline in Catholic literary culture since its great rise in the mid-twentieth century. He challenges Catholic writers to reoccupy and repair their great tradition. Dana Gioia's "The Catholic Writer Today" sets a mighty finger on the scales of literature: on the one side what matters and lasts, and on the other what's shallow and doesn't. This electrifying essay is a guide to the perplexed. Its arguments about Catholic literature could be applied to American writing in general. Without the complications of tradition and history-the history of meaning-what's left? -Cynthia Ozick Dana Gioia offers the most significant assessment of the situation of the American Catholic writer since the publication of Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners and Walker Percy's Signposts in a Strange Land. -Daniel McInerny

In this swift yet comprehensive survey, Trevor Cribben Merrill considers the works of Martin Mosebach, Christopher Beha, Randy Boyagoda, and many others.

"Fascinating snapshots of remarkable encounters which, when brought together, chart a delightfully unusual path to literary success."―Booklist "Reading this memoir is like being at one of those memorable dinner parties, attended by the best and brightest, sparkling with wit and excellent conversations. You don’t want it to be over, the conversations to end! But with books, you need not worry. You can go back to the party, savor it, reread it again, and again."―Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies and Afterlife “Gioia has been uncommonly lucky in meeting many major poets, among them Elizabeth Bishop. His portrait of her in these pages is shrewd and subtle. The famously elusive poet quivers into life here.”―Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me: An Encounter In Studying with Miss Bishop, Dana Gioia discusses six people who helped him become a writer and better understand what it meant to dedicate one’s life to writing. Four were famous authors―Elizabeth Bishop, John Cheever, James Dickey, and Robert Fitzgerald. Two were unknown―Gioia’s Merchant Marine uncle and Ronald Perry, a forgotten poet. Each of the six essays provides a vivid portrait; taken together they tell the story of Gioia’s own journey from working-class LA to international literary success.

In Hotly in Pursuit of the Real, the beloved bestselling novelist Ron Hansen opens the doors of his writing studio to share with us his passions for history, scandal, theology, Jesuits, the American West, and golf (which he plays even in bad weather). If Hansen's novels explore people very different from himself--from a stigmatic nun to a Victorian poet to Billy the Kid, and even Hitler's niece--the meditations in this book do the opposite, allowing us to glimpse the wellsprings of his imagination, the places and traditions and books that drive him to create made-up worlds. In that sense, the reflections in these pages truly serve as "notes toward a memoir." As each section unfolds, we gain a clearer sense of Hansen's aesthetic, the parallels he sees between writing and the sacraments, between literature's capacity to make history present to us and the Church's rich array of traditions, including the Jesuit charism that has inspired great writers, such as Gerard Manley Hopkins (and himself). Equally adept at telling a hilarious anecdote and guiding us through a complex, ambiguous episode in history, Hansen's language remains fresh and invigorating. Hotly in Pursuit of the Real takes you inside one writer's imagination, only to send you back out into the wide world with new eyes.

This powerful and timely book, written by a former Fundamentalist, is a thorough critique of the popular Fundamentalist notion of the "Rapture", the belief that Christians will be removed from earth prior to a time of Tribulation and the Second Coming. It examines the theological, historical, and Biblical basis for "premillennial dispensationalism", the belief system based around the Rapture, and popularized in the best-selling Left Behind books and taught by "Bible prophecy" writers Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, and many others. Written for both the lay person and the serious student, this book combines an engaging, popular approach with detailed footnotes and exhaustive research. Beginning with the big picture, it focuses first on key concepts such as eschatology, the Parousia, and the relationship between the Kingdom and the Church. It then examines the Book of Revelation, providing insights into the nature and purpose of that difficult, final book of the Bible. Another chapter looks at the concept of the "millennium" and how it has been understood by various Christians over the centuries. Olson then shows how Left Behind creator LaHayeಙs many works on "Bible prophecy" are filled with attacks on Catholicism, and often rely on sensationalism, shaky scholarship, and subjective interpretations of Scripture Olson, a former dispensationalist who now edits Envoy magazine, also presents a history of apocalyptic belief and theology, beginning with the Early Church Fathers and including the Montanists, St. Augustine, Joachim of Fiore, the Protestant Reformers, and the American Puritans. He shows how John Nelson Darby, an ex-Anglican priest, developed the premillennial dispensationalist system, which hinges on the Rapture, in the 1830s and how Darby relied upon faulty assumptions about Jesus Christ, the Church, and the Bible. The second part of the book, "A Catholic Critique of Dispensationalism", focuses on three important topics: the relationship between Israel, the Church, and the Kingdom; the interpretation of Scripture; and the nature of the Rapture event. Filled with a wealth of information drawn from both Protestant and Catholic sources, this section provides a complete rebuttal to the premillennial dispensationalist system and the "left behind" theology. The book concludes with a reflection on the Catholic understanding of the end times, salvation history, and the final judgement. Glossaries of key persons and terms are also included. A strong, but fair, critique of a dangerous and popular belief, Will Catholics Be "Left Behind"? provides Catholics and Protestants, lay people and clergy, and students and scholars with important answers and information about the roots and meaning of the "Rapture". "Millions of Americans believe the Lord will snatch them up any day now, leaving the rest of us to the horrors of a seven-year tribulation. The hitch is that the 'Rapture' has no pedigree. As Carl Olson shows, no Catholic or Protestant believed in it prior to the nineteenth century. It is an authentic Fundamentalist 'invention'." Karl Keating, Author, Catholicism and Fundamentalism "In this extraordinary book, Carl Olson uses a surgeonಙs scalpel to cut through the mass of confusion that dominates contemporary reflection on the Last Things. Achieving far more than a refutation of millennialist errors and other disordered apocalyptic theories, he illumines the Church's majestic vision of time and eternity and demonstrates that Jesus Christ is the Lord of History and its end." Michael O'Brien, Author, Father Elijah

Winner of a 2015 Catholic Press Award: Gender Issues Category (First Place). In this first book from an openly lesbian and celibate Catholic, widely published writer and blogger Eve Tushnet recounts her spiritual and intellectual journey from liberal atheism to faithful Catholicism and shows how gay Catholics can love and be loved while adhering to Church teaching. Eve Tushnet was among the unlikeliest of converts. The only child of two atheist academics, Tushnet was a typical Yale undergraduate until the day she went out to poke fun at a gathering of philosophical debaters, who happened also to be Catholic. Instead of enjoying mocking what she termed the “zoo animals,” she found herself engaged in intellectual conversation with them and, in a move that surprised even her, she soon converted to Catholicism. Already self-identifying as a lesbian, Tushnet searched for a third way in the seeming two-option system available to gay Catholics: reject Church teaching on homosexuality or reject the truth of your sexuality. Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith is the fruit of Tushnet’s searching: what she learned in studying Christian history and theology and her articulation of how gay Catholics can pour their love and need for connection into friendships, community, service, and artistic creation.