Editorial Statement

Gregory Wolfe, Art and Poverty

Fiction

Mary Burns, The Spif
Christopher David Hall, In the Clear

Poetry

Fleda Brown, Every Day I Touch Things
Tiny Fish

Sarah Klassen, Sardis
Ephesus

Bruce Bond, Cross of Nails

William Kelley Woolfitt, Liturgy of the Hours

Becca J.R. Lachman, Saint Francis Considers His Own Advice...
Saint Francis Appears at the Scene...

Will Wells, About Angels: Cahors, France, 2007

Jerry Harp, Verbum: A Rhapsody
Beginnings Again

Cameron A. Lawrence, Between Prayer
Icon of an Unknown Saint

Jason Myers, The Concord of the Strings
Hymn

Judith Sornberger, Now I Lay Me Down
You Couldn't Believe as I Did

Interview

Andy Whitman, A Conversation with Bruce Cockburn

Visual Arts

Jeffrey L. Kosky, Learning to Live on the Spiral Jetty

Menachem Wecker, The Visual Jewishness of Mark Podwal

Essays

Lauren F. Winner, Bread
Read our web-exclusive interview with Lauren F. Winner here.

Chris Hoke, Hearts like Radios

Confessions

Harrison Scott Key, Man Is But an Ass

Book Review

Nick Ripatrazone, Arthur Bradley and Andrew Tate’s The New Atheist Novel
Ian McEwan’s The Children Act
Salman Rushdie’s Fury
James Wood’s The Book Against God

Bruce Bond’s collections of poetry include The Visible (Louisiana State) and Choir of the Wells (Etruscan). His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Georgia Review, The New Republic, and Gettysburg Review. He has received fellowships from the NEA, Texas Institute of the Arts, and Institute for the Advancement of the Arts. He is a Regents Professor at the University of North Texas and poetry editor for American Literary Review. 

Fleda Brown’s eighth collection of poems is No Need of Sympathy (BOA). Her memoir is Driving with Dvorak (Nebraska). She is professor emeritra at the University of Delaware and past poet laureate of Delaware. She is on the faculty of the Rainer Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program in Tacoma, Washington. 

Mary Burns works as a technical editor for a software company. She has lived most of her life in Hawaii and Florida. Her work has appeared at wide intervals in Florida magazine, Puerto del Sol, and Today’s Christian Woman. She has an MFA in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University. 

Christopher David Hall was born in Indiana and raised in Indiana and Texas. Currently he teaches at a small liberal arts school for young boys in Houston, Texas.

Jerry Harp has three collections of poetry, the second of which, Gatherings (Ashland Poetry), won the Robert McGovern Publication Prize. His work appears in Best American Poetry (2009) and elsewhere. He teaches at Lewis and Clark College.

Chris Hoke lives in Washington State’s Skagit Valley, where he works with inmates in and out of the county jail, on staff with Tierra Nueva. More about the ministry and his writing is at www.chris-hoke.com.

Harrison Scott Key is the author of The World’s Largest Man: A Memoir (HarperCollins) and a humor columnist for Oxford American. His nonfiction has also appeared in Best American Travel Writing, Outside, Reader’s Digest, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere, and his work has been adapted for the stage. He teaches English at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He tweets at @HarrisonKey.

Sarah Klassen is a Winnipeg poet and fiction writer. Her seventh poetry collection is Monstrance (Turnstone). Her first novel, The Wittenbergs (Turnstone), received an award from the Manitoba Historical Society, and she has also published two story collections. She has taught high school English in Winnipeg and English language and literature in Lithuania and Russia. 

Jeffrey L. Kosky is professor of religion at Washington & Lee University. His book Arts of Wonder: Enchanting Secularity (Chicago) received the 2013 Award for Excellence in Constructive-Reflective Studies from the American Academy of Religion.

Becca J.R. Lachman teaches at and writes for Ohio University. Her poetry collections are Other Acreage (Gold Wake) and The Apple Speaks (Cascadia), and she is the editor of A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation with William Stafford (Woodley). The poems in this issue are part of a series imagining what Saint Francis might be doing in today’s world.

Cameron Alexander Lawrence is a writer and editor from the American Southwest. He now lives in Decatur, Georgia, with his wife and three young daughters.

Jason Myers was named Catherine Osgood Foster Scholar at Bennington College by Mary Oliver. He received an MFA in Poetry from NYU and an MDiv from Emory University. He was licensed as a minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the home church of Martin Luther King, and is currently seeking ordination in the Episcopal Church. His work has appeared in American Poet, Agni, Ecotone, Paris Review, Tin House, and many other publications. He works as a hospice chaplain in Austin.

Nick Ripatrazone’s newest book is Ember Days, a collection of stories (Braddock Avenue). He is a staff writer for The Millions, and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Esquire, Kenyon Review, and Sewanee Review.

Judith Sornberger is the author of the poetry collection Open Heart (Calyx) and five chapbooks, most recently Wal-Mart Orchid (winner of the Helen Kaye Chapbook Prize). Her prose memoir The Accidental Pilgrim: Finding God and His Mother in Tuscany is forthcoming from Shanti Arts Publications.

Menachem Wecker is a freelance journalist based in Washington, DC, who writes on culture, religion, and education. He holds a master’s in art history from George Washington University.

Will Wells’s poetry collection Unsettled Accounts (Ohio/Swallow) won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. His poems have recently appeared in River Styx, Southwest Review, Evansville Review, Main Street Rag, Alabama Literary Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Cape Rock, Miramar Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. 

Andy Whitman has written about music for Paste, All Music Guide, Christianity Today, and Image. He’s been a Bruce Cockburn fan for about as long as Bruce Cockburn has been recording music.

Lauren F. Winner’s books include Girl Meets God (Algonquin), Mudhouse Sabbath (Paraclete), Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis, and Wearing God (both from HarperOne). She has appeared on PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and has written for the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly, Books and Culture, and Christianity Today. She teaches at Duke Divinity School.

William Kelley Woolfitt’s two books of poetry are Beauty Strip (Texas Review) and the forthcoming Charles of the Desert (Paraclete). He has received a Howard Nemerov Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and his poems and stories have appeared in Shenandoah, Threepenny Review, Appalachian Heritage, Tin House Online, Notre Dame Review, Cincinnati Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing and literature at Lee University.

Read our interview with Lauren F. Winner, only available online!