100 Writers of Faith 0 comments

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!