Writers

Scroll to the bottom of the page for answers to some of the frequently asked questions we come across.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Fiction

 

Jean Baxter recently published Salvageable, a young-adult book discussing trust issues between a child and his parents and how these issues can spill over into other aspects of life. This coming-of-age story is Baxter's first novel and was ]published by Soul Mate Publishing LLC, and is available as an ebook.

 

Nancy Raines Day has published What in the World? Numbers in Nature, a rhyming-counting picture book that encourages children to find numbers in nature. Nancy has written a total of nine children’s books and offers activities for children that go along with each one. Learn more about her other books here.

Lauri Anderson has published eight books of fiction, and his most recent, Mosquito Conversations: More Stories from the Upper Peninsula, was a finalist for the Maria Thomas Award as well as the 2010 Peace Corps Writers Award, was selected for a GobalTeach.Net listing, and could be considered his best work to date. The book focuses on the colorful lives of the denizens in the Mosquito Inn bar in the fictional Misery Bay that has been the setting for several earlier books by Anderson, who hails from the Upper Peninsula in Michigan. Check out Anderson's writing projects and those of others in the Finnish-American community at finnala.com.

 

Nancy K. Barry’s one-act (and one-woman) play Lessons from Cancer College premiered in 2010. She is surprised, and ultimately healed, by the revelation that while she thought she was teaching through cancer, somehow cancer had been teaching through her. Nancy teaches at Luther College and recently started a weekly radio broadcast called “The Naked Page.”

 

Jim Bodeen has taught literature and writing to Latino students in Yakima, Washington. Bodeen writes in both English and Spanish and has edited a bilingual anthology of poems by young Latino writers. Three years ago, he followed his campesino roots to a rancho in Michoacán, which eventually led him to La Cuestita, Michoacán, The Lutheran Church in El Salvador, Pure Water for the World in Honduras, the Peace Train to Washington, D.C., and Holden Village in the North Cascade Mountains. He wrote the novel This House: A Poem in Seven Books (1999) which is an epic narrative. He is also the publisher and editor of Blue Begonia Press.

 

 

Cristy Fossum is the self-published author of the Sunday by Sunday series, a fictional account of a church year. “If you have ever gone to church, ever kept a journal or diary, ever sat on a bench and observed the peculiarities of people, ever thought spiritual questions that maybe you were afraid to speak out loud—you will find something in this book that resonates within you,” writes Ginger Barfield. Updates are posted on her blog.

 

 

Paul Hedeen's novel The Knowledge Tree is "a tour of Berlin--and of the human heart--that lights both the dark corners and the familiar haunts," writes Paul Shepherd in the foreword. You might also be interested in his collection of poems titled, Under a Night Sky. Hedeen taught English at Wartburg College for over 15 years before becoming Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Monroe County Community College in Michigan.

 

 

The first novel by Pamela Johnston, Little Lost River (University of Nevada Press, 2008), was a finalist for the Paterson Fiction Prize. Author Elizabeth Oness writes, “Johnston’s evocative prose lets the reader feel how the landscape of the West limns these characters’ lives. I love the psychological acuity of this novel, whose youthful characters speak to us in voices that are confiding, clear-minded, and probing.” 

 

 

Essayist, poet, and fiction writer Thomas Maltman has recently published his newest novel, Little Wolves, a murder mystery set in a small town in 1980s Minnesota. His first novel, The Night Birds, has won several national awards, including an Alex Award, a Spur Award, and the Friends of American Writers Literary Award. In 2009 the American Library Association chose The Night Birds as an “Outstanding Book for the College Bound.” The Boston Globe writes: "[W]e all set our sights on the Great American Novel...[and Maltman] comes impressively close to laying his hands on the grail...wonderfully nuanced...beautifully expressed." To learn more about this author--who is married to a Lutheran pastor--visit his website.

 

 

Chair of the Lutheran Readers Project—a readers’ resource, writer connection, and book club—Mark Mustian is an author, attorney, and former city commissioner in Tallahassee, Florida. Publisher’s Lunch says of his recent novel The Gendarme, "pitched as The Madonnas of Leningrad meets The Bastard of Istanbul, [this novel is] about a 92 year old Turkish-American man suffering from dementia, who suddenly starts having vivid dreams about his role in the Armenian genocide of 1915, and of the young Armenian woman he fell in love with and spared--and how he sets out in secret to find her to beg her forgiveness."

 

 

Starting at age 15, David Oppegaard has written numerous novels, some published and some not, in genres ranging from science fiction to literary fiction, dark fantasy, and horror fiction. He is the author of the Bram Stoker-nominated The Suicide Collectors and the recently-released The Firebug of Balrog County. Publishers Weekly gave The Suicide Collectors a starred review, writing "Eloquent prose and haunting characters lift Oppegaard's astonishing debut..." Visit his website for information on more awards and his upcoming novel, The Town Built on Sorrow.

 

 

"In Drift of the Hunt (Nobodaddies Press, Sacramento, CA, 2006) Craig Paulenich reveals a mythic world, the world of the Goat-Man--who is part Ted Hughes, part Seamus Heaney, part Phil Levine and James Wright, part Golem, part Grendel. Here is exquisite, profound and cautionary poetry born of both romance and earth, of dark magic and of even darker factories and mineshafts. These poems will haunt you, deliciously, for a very long time,” writes Gail Wronsky. Paulenich, author of three books of poetry, is an associate professor of English at Kent State University and faculty with the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (NEOMFA). Information on forthcoming readings is available at the NEOMFA website.

 

 

Gloria Ostrem Sawai was an American-born daughter of a Lutheran minister who grew up in Canada and was educated at Augsburg College and the University of Montana. Sawai taught high school English as well as Creative Writing at the University of Alberta, the Banff School of Arts, and Gran MacEwan College. A Song for Nettie Johnson (2002), a collection of short stories, won four major literary awards in Canada, including the Governor General’s Award for fiction. Sawai passed away in 2011.

 

 

Eunice Victoria Scarfe teaches for the University of Alberta Faculty of Extension and the International Women’s Writing Guild. She is a workshop leader and award-winning short story writer. She has been published in literary magazines and anthologized in Best Stories in Canada. She regularly directs workshops empowering women to find language for their own artistic expression. Through her company, Saga Seminars, she offers writing workshops at Holden Village and across the country.

 

 

Paul Shepherd, founder and co-director of the Lutheran Writers Project, is the author of More Like Not Running Away, winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize. He recently taught travel writing with Semester at Sea.

 

 

René Steinke’s latest novel Holy Skirts was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award and was listed among the Best Books of 2005 by the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post. The National Book Foundation Judges’ says of Holy Skirts: “A delightful novel in myriad ways but none more than in the feast of language it offers us and a heroine who is both guileless and irresistible.…[Steinke] unflinchingly addresses the questions: How is art made? At what cost? Why does it matter? Her explorations go to the heart of feminism and modernity.” Look for her award-winning appearance as keynote speaker at the Lutheran Festival of Writing. Also, you can find a reading guide for Holy Skirts on the Project Selections page.

 

 

Ricki Thompson's young adult historical novel City of Cannibals is now released. One Amazon reviewer writes, “masterful storyteller Ricki Thompson transforms a dangerous state of affairs into a rollicking adventure. She balances the brutality of the medieval period with an innocent love story. Vivid details combined with earthy vulgarity transport readers to London's gritty streets. City of Cannibals is historical fiction with a healthy dose of Shakespearean charm and wit."

 

 

Walter Wangerin, Jr., winner of the National Book Award, is widely recognized as one of today’s most gifted writers on issues of faith and spirituality, and his writing career has encompassed almost every genre: fiction, essay, spirituality, children’s stories, and biblical exposition. Wangerin’s most recent book Beate Not the Poore Desk offers advice to aspiring writers. In another recent book entitled Everlasting is the Past, Wangerin relates the story of his struggle with doubt in seminary, and his discovery of renewal.

 

 

Amy Weldon, an Associate Professor at Luther College, has published works of fiction and creative nonfiction in numerous periodicals, some of which you can read online. The Hands-On Life: How to Wake Yourself Up and Save the World, a “guide to mindfulness in the digital age,” is forthcoming from Cascade Books/Wipf and Stock Publishers. 

 

 

Nonfiction

 

 

Environmental writer David S. Faldet is Jones Professor of English at Luther College. Oneota Flow: The Upper Iowa River and Its People (University of Iowa, 2009) blends history, environmental research, and personal experience and argues that taking care of the rivers around us is a necessary way to take care of our future. Much of his published writing deals with William Morris, a writer and artist who was an early environmentalist. A list of his poems available online can be found here.

 

 

Wittenberg professor D'Arcy Fallon has published a memoir, So Late, So Soon, about living in an isolated religious commune in Northern California. In the past she worked as a reporter, focusing her stories on those in need and those most at risk in society. The American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors named her one of the country’s best newspaper columnists.

 

 

Gary Fincke has published over twenty-two books of poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction, including The Canals of Mars, a “memoir of weakness,” and more recently, The Killer’s Dog, which won the Elixir Press Fiction Prize. Bringing Back the Bones: New and Selected Poems was published by Stephen F. Austin University Press in 2016. West Virginia University Press will publish The Out-of-Sorts: New and Selected Stories in November 2017, and in early 2018 Pleiades Press will publish The Darkness Call, a collection of personal essays that won the Robert C. Jones Prose Prize.

 

 

Emily Rapp Black is an accomplished author, speaker, and advocate for terminally ill children and their parents. Her memoir, Poster Child, was a New York Times Bestseller, an Editor’s Pick, and a finalist for the PEN Center Literary Award in Nonfiction. Her most recent book, The Still Point of the Turning World, describes her and her husband’s struggle to find moments of joy in their son’s life after he was diagnosed with the rare and fatal Tay-Sachs disease. Visit her website.

 

 

Robert Schultz, a Luther College and Cornell University graduate, is the award-winning author of five books: three collections of poetry; novel, The Madhouse Nudes; and a work of nonfiction, We Were Pirates: A Torpedoman’s Pacific War. Schultz’s most recent work, Ancestral Altars, is a collaboration with photographer Binh Danh in the form of a multimedia iBook that includes poems, audio, and art. Another collaboration with Binh Danh has been the traveling art exhibition War Memoranda: Photography, Walt Whitman, and Renewal. Recently Schultz has been exhibiting and selling his own artworks. Visit Robert Schultz’s website to learn more.

 

 

Lois Shepherd is the author of If That Ever Happens to Me: Making Life and Death Decisions after Terri Schiavo. Lois is the Wallenborn Professor of Biomedical Ethics, Professor of Public Health Sciences, and Professor of Law at University of Virginia. 

 

 

Poetry

 

 

Poet Anne Basye has published a memoir, Sustaining Simplicity: A Journal, about a year of deliberately simple living, and more recently, Green Christmas: How to Have a Joyous, Eco-Friendly Holiday Season. When she served as Associate Director for Global Resources with ELCA Global Mission she wrote about Lutherans collaborating globally to bring God’s culture to life. Basye lives in Mount Vernon, Washington and continues to write.

 

 

Poet, Professor of English, and Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies at Wheaton College, Jill Peláez Baumgaertner says of herself: “I write in order to figure out how to say the unsayable, to put into language that which goes beyond language, to make myself pay attention.” She has published several poetry collections and chapbooks, including Finding Cuba, Leaving Eden, and My Father’s Bones. A list of all her publications can be found here.

 

 

Blueroad Press published Philip S. Bryant’s collection of jazz poems, Stompin’ at the Grand Terrace: A Jazz Memoir in Verse, along with accompanying CD, in the spring of 2009. Centered on the theme of the history of jazz and its place in American cultural life, the poems in this collection are an extension of the poem “Stella By Starlight” in Bryant’s 1998 book, Sermon on a Perfect Spring Day.

 

 

The poetry of Ralph S. Carlson, Professor of English at Azusa Pacific University, has been widely published in poetry journals, reviews, and literary magazines. Now, he has put forth a collection through Lulu.com. The poems in Waiting To Say Amen “explore both the joy of community and the dark side of religious ardor and rote worship…and stretch to include compassionate meditations on aging, the sadness of a mother in a nursing home, a devastating journey through a cancer diagnosis, and what runs like a river throughout the poems, found most movingly in the title poem, the struggle between devotion and doubt” (from Florence Weinberger’s review on Lulu.com: 25 July 2010).

 

Susanna Childress’s debut volume of poems, Jagged with Love, was selected by former US poet laureate Billy Collins for the 2005 Brittingham Prize; her second book, Entering the House of Awe, won the 2012 Society of Midland Authors Award. Childress is an associate poetry editor at 32 Poems and an Associate Professor of English at Hope College.

 

 

Robert K. Cording has published eight collections of poems, including Life-List (1987), which won the Ohio State University Press/Journal Award, What Binds Us to This World (1991), Heavy Grace (1996), Against Consolation (2002), Common Life (2006), A Word in My Mouth: Selected Spiritual Poems (2013), and most recently, Only So Far (2015). He is Professor of English and Barrett Chair of Creative Writing at the College of the Holy Cross. Read more or purchase his works here.

 

 

Barabara Crooker, an award-winning poet, has been published in numerous magazines, and has had residencies in Virginia, France, and Ireland. About one of her newer works, author Dick Allen commented, ”To say it flat out: From her hiding place in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania, Barbara Crooker has been writing--one by one--some of the finest poems in America.” Her most recent book of poetry, Les Fauves, came out in January 2017. Check out her website here.

 

 

Cass Dalglish’s poetry collection, Humming the Blues (Calyx, 2008), is an improvised interpretation—with a jazzy flair—of Sumerian cuneiform signs in Enheduanna’s Song to Inanna, (ancient Iraq, 2350 BCE). Dalglish, adept at crafting modern poetry from this ancient text, invites the reader to a land far away and long ago through her writings.

 

 

Jill Alexander Essbaum’s most recent publication is the New York Times Bestselling novel Hausfrau (2015). About her poetry, G.M. Palmer writes, "No poet today dares play with such spiritual fire like Jill Alexander Essbaum dares. Her poems skirt the edge of blasphemy and pray for re-readings and a spiritual embrace. Dancing on the edge of her words one finds despair and salvation, often in the same word." Essbaum teaches at University of California-Riverside Palm Desert’s Low-Residency MFA program.

 

 

Katy Giebenhain edits the Poetry + Theology rubric for Seminary Ridge Review. She also works as the Associate Director of Communications at Gettysburg Seminary where she is involved in many of the Seminary’s organizations. Her poem “Pretending to be Italian” is the winner of the 2009 George Scarbrough Prize for Poetry.

 

 

Former director of the Lutheran Festival of Writing and Professor Emerita of English at Luther College, poet Carol Gilbertson's “Night Rising” inspired Philip Wharton’s composition for flute, oboe, and strings, entitled “Nightrising”. Gilbertson also wrote the libretto for “Birdsongs,” a song cycle for mezzo-soprano by Wharton. Her poem “Hercules” won the 2006 Flyway Sweet Corn Prize for Poetry, and her poem “On the Train from Krakow” was recently given honorable mention in the 2009 MacGuffin Poet Hunt. Her chapbook, From a Distance, Dancing is available here.

 

 

John Graber has published over fifty poems in national magazines. After his meeting with Jim Bodeen at the 2007 Lutheran Festival of Writing, Thanksgiving Dawn was published by Bodeen’s Blue Begonia Press (2008) and later nominated for the 2010 Pushcart Prize. He is working on two more books, one of which is focused on his experience as a Christian with bipolar disorder.

 

 

Author and hymnist Gracia Grindal is the author of Preaching from Home, a study of female Scandinavian hymn writers; Thea Rønning: Young Woman on a Mission, a biography of a Norwegian-American woman who spent her life as a missionary to women in China; and a biography of Elisabeth Fedde, who founded the Brooklyn and Minneapolis deaconess hospitals. She has also completed a cycle of hymns on Old Testament lectionary texts (Wayne Leupold Editions, 2011), a series on the Epistles (Wayne Leupold Editions, 2015), and is working on a study of Scandinavian-American Lutheran parsonage traditions.

 

 

Patrick Hicks is Writer-in-Residence at Augustana University and faculty member at the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College. Hicks has published seven books, including novels and poetry collections. His most recent poetry collection, Adoptable, looks at international adoption, and explores his own experiences with his adopted son. His critically acclaimed novel, The Commandant of Lubizec, takes place in a Nazi death camp. Among many awards and honors, Hicks has been nominated seven times for the Pushcart Prize and was a finalist for the High Plains Book Award.

 

 

Diane LeBlanc is the author of four poetry chapbooks. Sudden Geography was published in 2014, and This Space for Message is forthcoming. Her collection Dancer with Good Sow, part of the New Women’s Voices Series written by women across the US, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2008. LeBlanc directs the writing program and teaches at St. Olaf College. To read more about her work and find out about her upcoming events, visit her blog.

 

 

A number of Lutheran Writers Project authors have poems in the anthology, Simul: Lutheran Voices in Poetry, edited by Mark Patrick Odland.

 

 

Co-founder of the Virtual Artists Collective (a "virtual" gathering of musicians, poets, and visual artists), Steven Schroeder has a large collection of poems, paintings, and books available on his website. He says that he “[hopes his] art always invites more than it contains”. His most recent publication is a collection of public lectures titled, What’s Love Got To Do With It? A City Out of Thin Air. Red Stones is a collection of poems by Jonas Zdanys, with paintings by Schroeder. 

 

 

Joyce Sutphen was trained as a Shakespearean at the University of Minnesota. She is an associate professor at Gustavus Adolphus College. She has published three volumes of poems, including Coming Back to the Body (2000) and Naming the Stars (2003), a collection of sonnets that won the Minnesota Book Award. Red Dragonfly Press published a small letter-press edition of her sonnets entitled Fourteen Sonnets. In 2011, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton named Sutphen the second Minnesota Poet Laureate. 

 

 

Cary Waterman is the author of five books of poems, including When I Looked Back You Were Gone, which was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award. Book of Fire was a finalist for the 2012 Midwest Book Award. She teaches in the English Department at Augsburg College.

 

 

National Magazine Award Finalist and Pushcart Prize winner Joe Wilkins was the 2009 recipient of the Richard J. Margolis Award of Blue Mountain Center, which goes to “a promising new journalist or essayist whose work combines warmth, humor, wisdom and concern with social justice.” He is the author of Killing the Murnion Dogs and Ragged Point Road (Main Street Rag 2006), among many others. His most recent book, The Mountain and the Fathers, was a finalist for the 2013 Orion Book Award and winner of the 2014 GLCA New Writers Award in Nonfiction. 

 

 

Vincent Wixon has three books of poems, including most recently, Blue Moon (Wordcraft of Oregon). He is co-producer of documentary films on poet William Stafford and former Oregon poet laureate Lawson Inada. His work in the William Stafford Archives in Portland includes co-editing two Stafford books on writing for the University of Michigan’s Poets on Poetry Series, and choosing poems for Stafford’s selected poems.

 

 

 

Spiritual and Inspirational

 

 

Carol Rausch Albright writes about the dialogue between religion and science. She is author or co-author of five books, and is Visiting Professor of Religion and Science at Lutheran Theological School at Chicago. You can read more about her work here.

 

 

New York Times best-selling author Nadia Bolz-Weber is author of Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television (Seabury, 2008), and most recently, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People. She writes a "sarcastic Lutheran" website and is Pastor of The House of All Sinners and Saints.

 

 

Paula Carlson is co-contributing editor of four volumes in a series titled Listening for God, published by Augsburg Fortress. In each volume, she and Peter Hawkins focus on the faith journeys of 8 authors. Dr. Carlson now serves as president of Luther College.

 

 

As co-editor of Our Stories of Miscarriage: Healing with Words (Fairview 1997), Rachel Faldet has appeared on NBC's Today show. Booklist says of the book, "Even the briefest accounts here are moving, and the more probing entries are remarkably powerful in their evocation of the harsh realities of an unborn baby's death." Faldet is currently at work on a memoir about the sister-in-law she has never met in person.

 

 

Frank Honeycutt’s 95 Prostheses: Appendages and Musings for the Body of Christ in Transition will be released in 2017 by Cascade Books. He has served as pastor at several churches throughout South Carolina, and currently resides in Walhalla, SC with his family. Read more about his books here.

 

 

Heidi Neumark is a Lutheran pastor and author of the book Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx. She has worked in New York City; South Carolina; inner-city Philadelphia; Hoboken, New Jersey; and in Christian Base Communities in Argentina and Peru. She worked with Servicio Paz y Justicia, a human rights organization led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel. Currently, Neumark is the pastor of the Trinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan.

 

 

Amy Viets’ first book, Making Faith Fun: 132 Spiritual Activities You Can Do with Your Kids was published by ACTA Publications in 2006. The book provides activities to help families weave their faith into the mesh of their lives, as they drive in the car, shop, do chores, and go about their daily routines. Her second book is Let Me Sow Light: Living With a Depressed Spouse, co-written with Bernadette Stankard. Amy is the Director of Children’s Ministry at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Overland Park, Kansas.

 

 

Resources by author and pastor Paul Walters include Called by God to Serve: Reflections for Church Leaders (co-author, Robert F. Holley), which offers devotions and discussion questions for church leaders on the topic of service, and Christ in Your Marriage: Worship for Life (co-author, James Armentrout), a resource for married, or soon-to-be-married couples.

 

 

Shirley Dyer Wuchter has edited three books of her late husband's sermons according to the seasons of the church year. Uplifting Christ Through Autumn, Shining Through the Darkness, Growing in Christ, and Walking with Christ can be found at www.csspub.com.

 

 

 

Of Note

 

 

Gloria Bengtson of Saint Paul, Minnesota has over thirty years’ experience as a developer of adult curriculum and has produced a number of major Bible studies. Previously the Senior Editor at Augsburg Books, she now teaches English in Bratislava, Slovakia through the ELCA Division for Global Mission.

 

 

David Crowe, Associate Professor and Chair of the English Department at Augustana College, is a specialist in early twentieth century American literature. He is in the process of completing a book on “John Updike and his sense of faith as described by the existentialist thinker Soren Kierkegaard.”

 

 

Editor of Lutheran Woman Today Kate Elliott has worked in magazine publishing for over twenty years. Prior to working with Lutheran Woman Today, Elliott was the editor of Seeds for the Parish, the resource paper published by ELCA Communication Services. Elliott has held positions in numerous philanthropic and social service organizations. 

 

 

It’s hard for this to sound like good news, but Augsburg Fortress announced that they will focus on its "two most important callings"-- group-use materials for congregations,

such as faith formation and worship materials, and textbooks and monographs for higher education, said Beth A. Lewis, Augsburg Fortress president and chief executive officer. This means that Augsburg will not accept or sell new titles in its consumer-oriented book line, though it will continue to market stocks on hand; it will close nine bookstores; it will no longer provide bookstore operations at synod assemblies and most large ELCA churchwide events. Tough times, we’re sure. But for writers, and readers, this means a narrowing of the ministry—one that will be hard to rebuild.

 

 

Susan Johnson is the Acquisitions Editor for Augsburg Fortress / Lutheran Voices. Johnson has twenty-five years of experience writing and editing religious educational materials for a number of publishers. She has worked to create Bible study curriculum for individuals with developmental disabilities. Johnson worked as the director of Adult Faith Formation at a large Lutheran congregation in the Minneapolis metro area prior to joining the Augsburg Fortress book team in January of 2006. 

 

 

Daniel J. Lehmann is editor of The Lutheran, the magazine of the ELCA. He spent 27 years in secular newspapers as a reporter and editor, mostly at the Chicago Sun-Times. Check out some of his articles here. 

 

 

Bestselling Christian romance author and speaker Gail Gaymer Martin has a website and blog where you can find upcoming news of her books and appearances. You can also purchase worship resources, nonfiction, or any of her novels, including her latest, Poppy Fields With You. In addition to her success as an author, Gail is a founder of the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and enjoys singing with the Detroit Lutheran Singers.

 

 

John Munday and Frances Wohlenhaus-Munday have a series of books that stem from the murder of their daughter, ranging from help for other bereaved parents to a new novel, Marlys in Heaven. John also writes for local newspapers and serves on the ELCA Churchwide Council. Check out their website for more information.

 

 

Brianna Van Dyke is the founder and editor-in-chief of Ruminate, a quarterly literary and arts magazine engaging the Christian faith. Van Dyke started this Christian literary magazine, according to a news report, to break "the unfortunate stereotype of Christian writing as supposedly not as literary as secular writing." The magazine has published two Pulitzer Prize nominees, Frederick Buechner and Lawrence Dorr, plus other contributors of renown such as poet Luci Shaw and best-selling author Bret Lott.