A central part of Image's mission is to showcase the wealth of contemporary writing that grapples in a serious way with religious faith. But, of course, we are also always mindful of Image's "patron saints"—T.S. Eliot, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Georges Bernanos, Shusaku Endo, to name but a few—authors and thinkers who have inspired many of the writers who appear in our pages, and who inspire us as we put those pages together.
Image’s "100 Writers of Faith" grew out of our contribution to the flurry of “top 100” lists made in 2000. It covers the twentieth century.
In selecting books for this list, we decided to list an author only once, so that we would end up with 100 different writers. Moreover, only creative writing was considered: fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction. The works selected had to manifest a genuine engagement with the Judeo-Christian heritage of faith, rather than merely use religion as background or subject matter.
While we have made every effort to be diverse and global in our selections, we've undoubtedly left things out. Feel free to use the Comment feature below to make your own suggestions.
Finally, support some wonderful people and a great bookstore: You can order any book from any of the lists from Eighth Day Books. Just click on their logo at the bottom of the page.
100 Writers of Faith
(in alphabetical order according to the author's last name)
- W.H. Auden
- Collected Poems
- Georges Bernanos
- The Diary of a Country Priest
- Wendell Berry
- Sabbaths
- John Berryman
- 77 Dream Songs
- Doris Betts
- Souls Raised from the Dead
- Leon Bloy
- The Woman Who Was Poor
- Heinrich Boll
- The Stories of Heinrich Boll
- Robert Bolt
- A Man for All Seasons
- Ray Bradbury
- Something Wicked This Way Comes
- George Mackay Brown
- Selected Poems
- Frederic Buechner
- Godric
- Scott Cairns
- Recovered Body
- Willa Cather
- Death Comes for the Archbishop
- G.K. Chesterton
- The Man Who Was Thursday
- Paul Claudel
- The Satin Slipper
- Elizabeth Dewberry
- Many Things Have Happened Since He Died
- Annie Dillard
- Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
- Andre Dubus
- Selected Stories
- T.S. Eliot
- Four Quartets
- Alice Thomas Ellis
- The Sin Eater
- Shusaku Endo
- Silence
- William Everson
- Collected Poems
- Horton Foote
- The Trip to Bountiful
- Christopher Fry
- The Lady's Not for Burning
- Denise Giardina
- Saints and Villains
- Jose Maria Gironella
- The Cypresses Believe in God
- Julien Green
- Diaries
- Graham Greene
- The Power and the Glory
- Patricia Hampl
- Virgin Time
- Ron Hansen
- Mariette in Ecstasy
- Mark Helprin
- A Soldier of the Great War
- Oscar Hijuelos
- Mr. Ives' Christmas
- Geoffrey Hill
- The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Peguy
- Edward Hirsch
- Earthly Measures
- Paul Horgan
- Great River
- Andrew Hudgins
- The Neverending
- John Irving
- A Prayer for Owen Meany
- Josephine Jacobsen
- In the Crevice of Time: New and Selected Poems
- Mark Jarman
- Questions for Ecclesiastes
- Elizabeth Jennings
- Collected Poems
- David Jones
- The Anathemata
- Nikos Kazantzakis
- The Last Temptation of Christ
- Thomas Keneally
- Three Cheers for the Paraclete
- William Kennedy
- Ironweed
- Wally Lamb
- I Know This Much is True
- Anne Lamott
- Traveling Mercies
- Madeleine L'Engle
- A Wrinkle in Time
- Denise Levertov
- The Stream and the Sapphire
- Philip Levine
- The Mercy
- C.S. Lewis
- Till We Have Faces
- Torgny Lindgren
- Light
- Robert Lowell
- Lord Weary's Castle
- Paul Mariani
- Salvage Operations
- Francois Mauriac
- Viper's Tangle
- Alice McDermott
- Charming Billy
- Thomas Merton
- Collected Poems
- Vassar Miller
- If I Had Wheels or Love: Collected Poems
- Walter Miller
- A Canticle for Leibowitz
- Czeslaw Milosz
- Collected Poems
- Brian Moore
- Black Robe
- Robert Morgan
- The Truest Pleasure
- Malcolm Muggeridge
- Chronicles of Wasted Time
- Edwin Muir
- Complete Poems
- Les Murray
- Collected Poems
- Kathleen Norris
- Dakota
- Patrick O'Brian
- The Aubrey/Maturin Novels
- Flannery O'Connor
- Short Stories
- Virginia Stem Owens
- If You Do Love Old Men
- Katherine Paterson
- Jacob Have I Loved
- Charles Peguy
- The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc
- Walker Percy
- The Moviegoer
- David Plante
- The Francoeur Trilogy
- Chaim Potok
- My Name is Asher Lev
- J.F. Powers
- The Presence of Grace
- Reynolds Price
- Three Gospels
- Richard Rodriguez
- Hunger of Memory
- Dorothy Sayers
- The Mind of the Maker
- Ignazio Silone
- Bread and Wine
- Louis Simpson
- New and Selected Poems
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
- Collected Stories
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
- Muriel Spark
- Memento Mori
- Tom Stoppard
- Hapgood
- John Heath Stubbs
- Collected Poems
- Allen Tate
- Collected Poems
- J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Lord of the Rings
- Anne Tyler
- Saint Maybe
- Sigrid Undset
- Kristin Lavransdatter
- John Updike
- In the Beauty of the Lillies
- Peter de Vries
- The Blood of the Lamb
- Dan Wakefield
- Returning
- Walter Wangerin, Jr.
- The Book of the Dun Cow
- Evelyn Waugh
- Brideshead Revisited
- Elie Wiesel
- Night
- Richard Wilbur
- New and Collected Poems
- Charles Williams
- All Hallows' Eve
- A.N. Wilson
- Wise Virgin
- Tim Winton
- Cloudstreet
- Larry Woiwode
- Beyond the Bedroom Wall
- Tobias Wolff
- In the Garden of the North American Martyrs
Did our Top 100 List omit a title worthy of mention?
Use the Comment feature to make your own suggestions!






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