I write because I breathe. It's what I do. I've always known that it was what I would do. As a child, making weekly trips to the local library and creating my own magazines, I knew in my heart that I ...

In a powerful essay in First Things, the poet Dana Gioia despairs of the state of Catholic writing in America today. First, he defines what he means by the Catholic sensibility in writing: There is no ...

Midway through Richard Rodriguez’s recent spiritual autobiography, Darling, the author offers Catholic readers a useful catechism: “I stay in the church because the church is more than its ignorance; ...

THERE are no living American Catholics who are major writers. By two rules of thumb I suggest that American Catholic writers have been found wanting: individually they have failed to produce (1) a ...

J.F. Powers is often referred to -- if anyone still refers to him, that is -- as a “Catholic writer.” This is understandable. His short stories, as well as his highly-praised novels Wheat that ...

CNA recently reviewed “Fatherless,” a book that has been dubbed “the Catholic novel of our generation.” The book, however, isn’t simply just story, author Brian Gail says of his work, “I’m hopeful ...

Friends and colleagues recalled the Washington native as a man of deep intelligence, keen insight and personal discipline ...

This eBook is a collection of 30 of the finest spirituality essays published in the National Catholic Reporter during 2012. Since its founding in 1964, NCR has published many well-known authors of ...

This essay was given as a talk at Union Theological Seminary in New York, during a conference on “Catholicism and the Public Square,” sponsored by Commonweal magazine and the Faith and Reason ...

Last week’s “In Person” introduced readers to Piers Paul Read, best known for his 1974 non-fiction work Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors. Now he’s got a new drama hitting bookstores, only it’s ...