We've rearranged this page! There are subheadings including: Literary Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry; Spiritual and Inspirational; Of Note; and Author Resources. Hopefully this will be an easier way to find out information about the newest authors and their work!



Literary Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry


Fiction

René Steinke’s latest novel Holy Skirts was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award and was listed among the Best Books of 2005 by the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post. The National Book Foundation Judges’ says of Holy Skirts: “A delightful novel in myriad ways but none more than in the feast of language it offers us and a heroine who is both guileless and irresistible.…[Steinke] unflinchingly addresses the questions: How is art made? At what cost? Why does it matter? Her explorations go to the heart of feminism and modernity.” Look for her award-winning appearance as keynote speaker at the Lutheran Festival of Writing. Also, you can find a reading guide for Holy Skirts on the Project Selections page.

Lauri Anderson has published eight books of fiction, and his most recent, Mosquito Conversations: More Stories from the Upper Peninsula, was a finalist for the Maria Thomas Award as well as the 2010 Peace Corps Writers Award, was selected for a GobalTeach.Net listing, and could be considered his best work to date.  The book focuses on the colorful lives of the denizens in the Mosquito Inn bar in the fictional Misery Bay that has been the setting for several earlier books by Anderson, who hails from the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. Check out Anderson's writing projects and those of others in the Finnish-American community at finnala.com.

Nancy K. Barry’s one-act (and one-woman) play, “Lessons from Cancer College,” premiered earlier this year. Not only an experienced writer, Barry is also a breast cancer survivor, and she draws on her personal journey for this work. One reporter states, “It tells the story of how the teacher becomes a student herself. She is surprised, and ultimately healed, by the revelation that while she thought she was teaching through cancer, somehow cancer had been teaching through her.”

Paul Shepherd, founder of the Lutheran Writers Project, has completed a new novel, Why Things Are the Way They Are, a book about alienation, isolation, aloneness, separation, and being forsaken, themes which are explored in the relationship between a violent father and a teenage son, characters found in his previous book, More Like Not Running Away, the subject of this interview with the author. Shepherd is currently in the process of publishing a book of poetry entitled Reasons Like Birds, and has few more works up his sleeve; find out more information at his website.

Walter Wangerin, Jr. is widely recognized as one of today’s most gifted writers on issues of faith and spirituality, and his writing career has encompassed almost every genre: fiction, essay, spirituality, children’s stories, and biblical exposition. Wangerin’s most recent work, Naomi and Her Daughters, to be released in late summer, is a historically accurate telling of the ancient biblical narrative of Naomi and Ruth, cast in new light and filled with rich description and gritty realism. Another 2010 book is Letters from the Land of Cancer, a series of letters in which Wangerin explores his own illness and mortality. His work, The Book of the Dun Cow, is featured in the Readers Project Selections, with study materials.

Amy Weldon has published works of fiction and creative nonfiction in numerous periodicals, most recently a fiction piece entitled “Fairhope.” From the first paragraph, Weldon’s character, the wife of a soldier, opens: “Who knows me anymore except this house, and what lives here with me? Its name is Fairhope, says the plaque. Nobody speaks its name, or mine, here anymore.”

Cristy Fossum is the self-published author of the Sunday by Sunday series, a fictional account of a church year. “If you have ever gone to church, ever kept a journal or diary, ever sat on a bench and observed the peculiarities of people, ever thought spiritual questions that maybe you were afraid to speak out loud—you will find something in this book that resonates within you,” writes Ginger Barfield in the foreword of the first book in the trilogy.

The first novel by Pamela Johnston, Little Lost River (University of Nevada Press, 2008), was a finalist for the Paterson Fiction Prize. Author Elizabeth Oness writes, “Johnston’s evocative prose lets the reader feel how the landscape of the West limns these characters’ lives. I love the psychological acuity of this novel, whose youthful characters speak to us in voices that are confiding, clear-minded, and probing.”

Essayist, poet, and fiction writer, Thomas Maltman, is currently working on a novel, Little Wolves. His first novel, The Night Birds, has won several national awards, including an Alex Award, a Spur Award, and the Friends of American Writers Literary Award. In 2009 the American Library Association chose The Night Birds as an “Outstanding Book for the College Bound.” The Boston Globe writes: "[W]e all set our sights on the Great American Novel...[and Maltman] comes impressively close to laying his hands on the grail...wonderfully nuanced...beautifully expressed." To learn more about this author--who is married to a Lutheran pastor--visit his website.

Chair of the Lutheran Readers Project—a readers’ resource, writer connection, and book club—Mark Mustian is an author, attorney, and city commissioner in Tallahassee, Florida. His novel The Gendarme came out this year (Amy Einhorn Books/G.P. Putnam’s Sons), with foreign editions in France, Greece, and Israel. Here’s the press from Publisher’s Lunch: "Pitched as The Madonnas of Leningrad meets The Bastard of Istanbul, [this novel is] about a 92 year old Turkish-American man suffering from dementia, who suddenly starts having vivid dreams about his role in the Armenian genocide of 1915, and of the young Armenian woman he fell in love with and spared--and how he sets out in secret to find her to beg her forgiveness."

Writing since age 15, David Oppegaard has written numerous novels, some published and some not, with styles that range from science fiction, literary fiction, dark fantasy, and horror fiction. He is the author of the Bram Stoker-nominated The Suicide Collectors and the recently-released Wormwood, Nevada. Publishers Weekly gave The Suicide Collectors a starred review, writing "Eloquent prose and haunting characters lift Oppegaard's astonishing debut..." Visit his website for information on more awards, as well as another novel coming out soon.

Ricki Thompson's young adult historical novel City of Cannibals is now released—and with a wonderful recommendation from Booklist.  One Amazon reviewer writes..."masterful storyteller Ricki Thompson transforms a dangerous state of affairs into a rollicking adventure. She balances the brutality of the medieval period with an innocent love story. Vivid details combined with earthy vulgarity transport readers to London's gritty streets. City of Cannibals is historical fiction with a healthy dose of Shakespearean charm and wit."

"In Drift of the Hunt (Nobodaddies Press, Sacramento, CA, 2006) Craig Paulenich reveals a mythic world, the world of the Goat-Man--who is part Ted Hughes, part Seamus Heaney, part Phil Levine and James Wright, part Golem, part Grendel. Here is exquisite, profound and cautionary poetry born of both romance and earth, of dark magic and of even darker factories and mineshafts. These poems will haunt you, deliciously, for a very long time."--Gail Wronsky. Paulenich is an associate professor of English at Kent State University and faculty with the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (NEOMFA). Information on forthcoming readings is available at www.ysu.edu/neomfa.

Paul Hedeen's novel The Knowledge Tree is "a tour of Berlin--and of the human heart--that lights both the dark corners and the familiar haunts," claims Paul Shepherd in the forward. Hedeen is a professor at Wartburg College.



Nonfiction

Gary Fincke has published twenty-two books of poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction, most recently a “memoir of weakness” entitled The Canals of Mars. Fincke explores weakness, which was a term in his family reserved for any human flaw, and the struggle he faced trying to constantly be perfect.

Robert Schultz's newest work is a nonfiction piece entitled We Were Pirates: A Torpedoman’s Pacific War, capturing and recounting the progress of the Pacific War through torpedoman Robert Hunt's eyes. Author Alex Kershaw says of this book: “An engrossing, fascinating read. First rate history that's also a page turner. Takes us deep into the most effective yet unheralded military campaign in US history—the defeat of Imperial Japan through unrestricted submarine warfare.” He is currently at work on a new collection of poems, some of which are forthcoming in New York Quarterly and Subtropics. Visit his website for more information on the author and his works.

Interested in environmental writing, David S. Faldet has recently published Oneota Flow: The Upper Iowa River and Its People (University of Iowa, 2009), in which he blends history, environmental research, and personal experience to show us that taking care of the rivers around us is a necessary way to take care of our future.  Much of his published writing deals with William Morris, a writer and artist who was an early environmentalist.

Emily Rapp's memoir, Poster Child, is now available in paperback from Bloomsbury USA. Although she is a Lutheran pastor's kid, readers might be surprised by the various antics described in this coming-of-age tale. She is currently teaching writing and literature at in the Los Angeles area. Visit her website.

Wittenberg professor D'Arcy Fallon has a memoir, So Late, So Soon, about living in an isolated religious commune in Northern California.


Poetry

Robert K. Cording has a new collection of poetry, Walking with Ruskin, due out in October, just in time for his keynote appearance at the Lutheran Festival of Writing. His publisher says of Cording’s work, “These poems ask us to attend, with devotion and care, to a world which will always remain a mystery, but a mystery in which love calls us to the things of this world where we may become most fully human. Walking with Ruskin looks at the difficulty of perception, of just how hard it is to simply "see" without asserting our own self-importance, self-needs, and self-justifications.” Look for this upcoming work here!

Poet and Christian Century poetry editor Jill Peláez Baumgaerter says of herself: “I write in order to figure out how to say the unsayable, to put into language that which goes beyond language, to make myself pay attention.” Her latest work, My Father’s Bones, explores the unspeakable aftermaths of tragedy and sorrow, including the death of her godson and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A list of her publications can be found here.

Jill Alexander Essbaum, a Christian erotic poet, claims she has three main obsessions: God, sex, and death. Her most recent publication is a single-poem chapbook, The Devastation. Famous for her wordplay and puns, Essbaum always provides an interesting and entertaining read. G.M. Palmer wrote this recently Essbaum: "No poet today dares play with such spiritual fire like Jill Alexander Essbaum dares. Her poems skirt the edge of blasphemy and pray for re-readings and a spiritual embrace. Dancing on the edge of her words one finds despair and salvation, often in the same word." We couldn't agree more.  No library today should be without one--or more--of her books.

Host of the Lutheran Festival of Writing, poet Carol Gilbertson's “Night Rising” inspired  Philip Wharton’s composition for flute, oboe, and strings, entitled “Nightrising." Gilbertson also wrote the libretto for “Birdsongs,” a song cycle for mezzo-soprano by Wharton.  Her poem “Hercules” won the 2006 Flyway Sweet Corn Prize for Poetry, and her poem “On the Train from Krakow” was recently given honorable mention in the 2009 MacGuffin Poet Hunt.

Hymnist Gracia Grindal has a forthcoming book from Eerdmans, Preaching from Home, which is a study of female Scandinavian hymn writers. She is also completing a cycle of hymns on Old Testament lectionary texts and a series on the Epistles, and is working on a study of Scandinavian-American Lutheran parsonage traditions. 

Patrick Hicks is the Writer-in-Residence at Augustana College as well as the author of five poetry collections, most recently This London (2010), which, according to one Amazon reviewer, “explores connections between history and place, colonialism and language, visiting and belonging, and [Hicks] points out the hidden streets and personalities of a city that changed the world.” He also recently won the Glimmer Train New Writer’s Fiction Award.

Blueroad Press published Philip S. Bryant’s collection of jazz poems, Stompin’ at the Grand Terrace: A Jazz Memoir in Verse, along with accompanying CD, in the spring of 2009. Centered on the theme of the history of jazz and its place in American cultural life, the poems in this collection are an extension of the poem “Stella By Starlight” in Bryant’s 1998 book, Sermon on a Perfect Spring Day.

Critics say of Susanna Childress, “Though the subject matter of Childress’ poetry is familiar—spurned love, abuse, infertility, dealing with cancer and the abduction of a young girl—by portraying these issues with care, she provokes the reader to consider the complexity of human love: how selfishness, fear, lust and even brutality might coincide with tenderness and loyalty.” Her debut volume of poems, Jagged with Love, was selected by former US poet laureate Billy Collins for the 2005 Brittingham Prize.

Barbara Crooker’s most recent book of poetry, More, came out earlier this year. One editorial review elegantly writes, “Propelled by her hunger for beauty and language, she flies in low over human experience, noticing every gesture, every flavor, every nuance of color and light. Whether she is pondering a spill of salt or stepping into a painting by Hopper, Crooker never for one second lets us forget what it is to be alive and how many ways we have been given to express our gratitude for this simple fact." Listen to Crooker read her poems on The Writer's Almanac. Find out more about Crooker--including public readings and educational events--at her webiste.

Cass Dalglish’s poetry collection, Humming the Blues (Calyx, 2008), is an improvised interpretation—with a jazzy flair—of Sumerian cuneiform signs in Enheduanna’s Song to Inanna, (ancient Iraq, 2350 BCE). Dalglish, adept at crafting modern poetry from this ancient text, invites the reader to a land far away and long ago through her writings.

Katy Giebenhain edits the Poetry + Theology rubric for Seminary Ridge Review. Her chapbook, Pretending to be Italian, is available from RockSaw Press, and the poem of the same title is the Winner of the 2009 George Scarbrough Prize for Poetry.

A St. Olaf grad, John Graber has published over fifty poems in national magazines. After his meeting with Jim Bodeen at the 2007 Lutheran Festival of Writing, Thanksgiving Dawn was published by Bodeen’s Blue Begonia Press (2008) and later nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize. A lifetime of work, of struggle, and worth every word.

Diane LeBlanc is the author of two poetry chapbooks, including Dancer with Good Sow (Finishing Line Press, 2008), a collection of poems about “navigating through shifting family relationships, through reality and dream, myth and parable and finally, through love,” according to one reporter. This literary gem is part of a greater series of poetry written by women across the States and published by Finishing Line Press.

The co-founder of the Virtual Artists Collective (a "virtual" gathering of musicians, poets, and visual artists), Steven Schroeder has a new book in philosophy and religious studies entitled On Not Founding Rome: The Virtue of Hesitation. A poet and philosopher, Schroeder has published two chapbooks and four full-length collections of poetry. He has also been working on a few new works of poetry.

Cary Waterman is the author of four books of poems, including When I Looked Back You Were Gone, which was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award.  Her new collection, The Memory Palace, is forthcoming from Nodin Press (2011).

A National Magazine Award Finalist, Joe Wilkins is the 2009 recipient of the Richard J. Margolis Award of Blue Mountain Center, which goes to “a promising new journalist or essayist whose work combines warmth, humor, wisdom and concern with social justice.” He is the author Killing the Murnion Dogs (forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press) and Ragged Point Road (Main Street Rag 2006).

Vincent Wixon has three books of poems, including most recently, Blue Moon (Wordcraft of Oregon). He is co-producer of documentary films on poet William Stafford and former Oregon poet laureate Lawson Inada. His work in the William Stafford Archives in Portland includes co-editing two Stafford books on writing for the University of Michigan’s Poets on Poetry Series, and choosing poems for Stafford’s selected poems.

A number of Lutheran Writers Project authors have poems in the anthology, Simul: Lutheran Voices in Poetry, edited by Mark Patrick Odland.



Spiritual and Inspirational


As co-editor of Our Stories of Miscarriage: Healing with Words (Fairview 1997), Rachel Faldet has appeared on NBC's Today show. Booklist says of the book, "Even the briefest accounts here are moving, and the more probing entries are remarkably powerful in their evocation of the harsh realities of an unborn baby's death." Faldet is currently at work on a memoir about the sister-in-law she has never met in person.

Lois Shepherd has a new book out: If That Ever Happens to Me: Making Life and Death Decisions after Terri Schiavo. Lois is Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Virginia's Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities. This is a great book for end-of-life discussion at churches.

Amy Viets’ first book, Making Faith Fun: 132 Spiritual Activities You Can Do with Your Kids was published by ACTA Publications in 2006. The book provides activities to help families weave their faith into the mesh of their lives, as they drive in the car, shop, do chores, and go about their daily routines. Her second is Let Me Sow Light: Living With a Depressed Spouse, co-written with Bernadette Stankard. Find more information, including chapter summaries and questions, on the website. Amy is the Director of Children’s Ministry at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Overland Park, Kansas.

Paula Carlson is co-contributing editor of four volumes in a series titled Listening for God, by AugsburgFortress. In each volume, Peter Hawkins and Paula focus on 8 authors of various faith journeys. Paula is a vice president at St. Olaf College.

More from the cutting edge: Nadia Bolz-Weber has written Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television (Seabury, 2008). A wild ride, and if that’s enough, try her "sarcastic Lutheran" website (who knew--sarcasm? Lutheran?)—and while your surfing, take a look at what she’s doing to bring more imagination to our church, at her church, the house for all.

Frank Honeycutt’s newest book: Marry a Pregnant Virgin: Unusual Bible Stories for New and Curious Christians (Augsburg Books, 2008). He’s pastor at Ebenezer Lutheran Church in Columbia, SC.

Carol Rausch Albright writes about the dialogue between religion and science; author or co-author of five books, you can read about her work at carolalbright.net

Resources by author and pastor Paul Walters include: Called by God to Serve: Reflections for Church Leaders--devotions and discussion questions for church leaders on the topic of service--or Christ in Your Marriage: Worship for Life--a resource for married, or soon-to-be-married couples.

Shirley Dyer Wuchter has completed three books, arranging her late husband's sermons according to the seasons of the church year. Sermons of Rev. Dr. Michael D. Wuchter, heard in parish and campus settings, are now in print in collections for fall, winter, and spring. Growing in Christ, Shining Through the Darkness, and Uplifting Christ Through Autumn can be found at www.csspub.com.

Check out Sustaining Simplicity: A Journal, a spiritual and practical story of discovering a simpler life, by Anne Basye.



Of Note


Brianna Van Dyke is the founder and editor-in-chief of Ruminate, a quarterly literary and arts magazine engaging the Christian faith. Van Dyke started this Christian literary magazine, according to a news report, to break “the unfortunate stereotype of Christian writing as supposedly not as literary as secular writing.” The magazine has published two Pulitzer Prize nominees, Frederick Buechner and Lawrence Dorr, plus other contributors of renown such as poet Luci Shaw and best-selling author Bret Lott.

Bestselling Christian romance author and speaker Gail Gaymer Martin has a website and blog where you can find upcoming news of her books and appearances.

It’s hard for this to sound like good news, but Augsburg Fortress announced that they will focus on its "two most important callings"-- group-use materials for congregations,
such as faith formation and worship materials, and textbooks and monographs for higher education, said Beth A. Lewis, Augsburg Fortress president and chief executive officer. This means that Augsburg will not accept or sell new titles in its consumer-oriented book line, though it will continue to market stocks on hand; it will close nine bookstores; it will no longer provide bookstore operations at synod assemblies and most large ELCA churchwide events. Tough times, we’re sure. But for writers, and readers, this means a narrowing of the ministry—one that will hard to rebuild.

John Munday and Frances Wohlenhaus-Munday have a series of books that stem from the murder of their daughter, ranging from help for other bereaved parents to a new novel. Check out their website for more infomation.



Author Resources


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