The Cost of Writing the Truth
I remember my mother used to go to bed for the day. The blackness of her mood seemed to darken her room. I don’t know why she left her door open. Maybe she knew, even in her unresponsive state, that...
View ArticleCommonplacing
Encore Guest Post by Ann Conway Here in central Maine, the world has come down to bone. The songbirds are gone and crows, which poet Mary Oliver terms “the deep muscle of the world,” have taken over my...
View ArticleThe Value of What I Teach
“Inch your way through dead dreams to another land.” —“Box of Rain,” Robert Hunter, lyrics; Phil Lesh, music. As I write this, during an ice storm, we’ve just finished the second week of classes. A few...
View ArticleDavid Foster Wallace Kills My Darlings
“You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” –C.S. Lewis To be an artist is to be constantly dissatisfied. Many acclaimed artists have said this, and though not acclaimed, I identify. I...
View ArticleFinding Poetry and Meaning in Internet Clicks
Three minutes, maybe four. Six minutes, maybe seven. A little bit of time. This morning open Google chrome to my homepage the University of North Carolina Asheville. Once it’s loaded, a quick glance at...
View ArticleShaping the Heart
The following post is an edited version of the commencement address given at the graduation ceremony of the Seattle Pacific University MFA in Creative Writing program on August 3. I’d like to share a...
View ArticleMy Online Footprint
Part Two: Repentance In Part One of this post, aptly subtitled “Resistance” by our new Good Letters editor, Cathy Warner (who deserves a shout-out for the various transitions she has navigated), I...
View ArticleThe Boy Who Believed in Airplanes
This is Jeffrey Overstreet’s last post as a regular contributor to Good Letters. We thank him for the thoughtful words and reviews he has shared so faithfully and wish him well in his next pursuits....
View ArticleGenius(es) Wanted
Guest Post By Santiago Ramos Where do literary geniuses come from? Or should the question be: Where does literary genius come from? Does genius live only in certain persons or can even a mediocre...
View ArticleFrom Luci Shaw to Brother K: My Life with IMAGE
Guest post by Lucas Kwong “Art, Faith, Mystery.” These watchwords have formed the center of Image journal’s mission since I joined its staff as a summer intern in 2006 (and, of course, well before...
View ArticleThe Problem with Waiting, Part 1
I don’t have much time. I’m sitting in a coffee shop less than a mile from my house and place of employment feverishly re-reading Dana Gioia’s recent First Things essay “The Catholic Writer Today” and...
View ArticleA Christian Writer Drops the F-Bomb: 25 Years of Image
To celebrate Image’s twenty-fifth anniversary we are posting a series of essays by people who have encountered our programs over the years. Guest post by Cathy Warner It was a reading at a memorial...
View ArticleSusan Sontag, Simon Weil, and the Pursuit of Seriousness
I could stare for many hours at that famous 1975 picture of Susan Sontag lying on her bed. She’s wearing a turtleneck sweater and her arms are tucked behind her head. She is thinking. Her eyes are...
View ArticleFiction is Truer than Fact
In Jill Lepore’s extraordinary biography of Ben Franklin’s sister Jane, Book of Ages, a short chapter near the end sketches the rise of the novel as a genre. Prior to the eighteenth century, “history”...
View ArticleRiding the Waves
My sons argue over Avengers characters. The littlest insists he’s Captain America. Another claims Hawkeye. There’s an argument over Ironman. They resolve it by awarding that honor to me, given that I’m...
View ArticleGreg Wolfe Made Me a Better Writer: 25 Years of Image
Guest post by William Coleman To celebrate Image’s twenty-fifth anniversary we are posting a series of essays by people who have encountered our programs over the years. My first task at Image was to...
View ArticleGirl Meets God in the Classroom, Part 2
Continued from yesterday. On the first day of my class “Spiritual Autobiographies: Theirs and Ours,” a few students shared that they weren’t “spiritual people.” Why, I wondered, did they sign up for...
View ArticleKissing Sideways
“I want to write,” people often tell me, eager to talk about the myriad ways that this happens in our mysterious, internet-driven world. Writing means different things to different folks: “I want to...
View ArticleI Belong to Jesus
Today we are happy to welcome back former Good Letters blogger Sara Zarr as a regular contributor once again. In the church of my childhood and adolescence, we had a tradition at church retreats and...
View ArticleWearing God: A Conversation with Lauren F. Winner, Part 2
Continued from yesterday. Image: A lot of history makes its way into your new book Wearing God, especially American history. Could you talk about what you think makes a good history book, the kind you...
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