More on: editorial statement

The following is adapted from an address given at the Wild Goose Festival in Corvallis, Oregon, on September 1, 2012. BEFORE I CAME DOWN here to deliver this talk on how art and social justice should—and shouldn’t—mix, I posted on Facebook that I was preparing by reading the works of various writers. One commenter singled…

This issue includes a special section on language that begins on page 35. For writers and artists concerned with faith, words, though slippery, can be like the air we breathe and the water we swim in: the medium that allows for conversation, makes our common life possible, and shapes all our experiences—even, as the distinguished…

A S I WRITE, POPE BENEDICT XVI has just departed by helicopter from the Vatican to begin his retirement. It is a safe bet that in the flood of commentary on his legacy little attention will be paid to one of his more inconspicuous initiatives—the “Courtyard of the Gentiles.” But to my mind, this little program,…

IT HAPPENED FOR ME in seventh-grade English class. My teacher, Mr. Taussig, was an older gentleman. He had driven a tank in the Battle of the Bulge, which feat of courage helped to offset the fact that he looked like Mr. Magoo. For many months he dragged us line by line through Shakespeare’s Romeo and…

The following is adapted from a commencement address given for the Seattle Pacific University master of fine arts in creative writing on August 3, 2013. OUR THEME FOR THIS residency has been comedy. As we’ve discovered, it’s a difficult topic precisely because we think we know all about it already. A number of truisms trip…

WHEN DANA GIOIA’S ESSAY “Can Poetry Matter?” appeared in The Atlantic in 1991, it galvanized a national conversation about the state of American literature and how creative writing was being taught, produced, and consumed by the reading public. That piece justly propelled Gioia to the front ranks of American letters, not only as a critic but as…

It is difficult to find a language in which faith and science can speak to each other. For some, faith and science are competing systems of thought, and an intellectually responsible person must make a choice between them, especially when it comes to questions about the origins and development of life. For others, faith and…

The following is adapted from a commencement address given at the Seattle Pacific University MFA in creative writing graduation in Santa Fe on August 9, 2014.   IN THE RAPIDLY CHANGING, cutthroat literary marketplace—where it’s easy to get published but harder to make any money or sustain a career—my usual commencement address, based as it…

There is nothing new under the sun.                                 —Ecclesiastes 1:9 Behold, I make all things new.                                 —Revelation 21:5   TO CELEBRATE OUR twenty-fifth anniversary this year we chose the theme “Making It New.” It seemed a simple enough decision. This journal exists to publish art and literature that engage the western faith traditions in…