Gary D. Schmidt

An Evensong

Arts & Literature

“If poetry is meant to open up what is frozen within us, Schmidt's poetry does that through its surprising juxtapositions, startling images, range of language, and allusive quality. This is the poetry of a celebratory journey, leading us more and more into the surprising quality of human creativity.”

Enemies in the Orchard

Fiction

“Enemies in the Orchard is unflinching in its portrayal of loss and grief during wartime. Its narrative is surprising, its characters complex, and its focus on forgiveness and love, and the meaning of the good and full life, is honest and heady. Plan to read this in one sitting—that’s how gripping this story is.”

Just Making

Arts & Literature

“By inquiring into the relationship between the making of art and the performance of justice, Mitali Perkins foregrounds questions that any serious creative has to grapple with. By identifying and clarifying the kinds of questions that need to be asked about that relationship, and by setting them in such a winsome and vulnerable and engaging form, she has done those serious creatives an enormous service. This is a book to be read with gratitude.”

The Poet and the Fly

Arts & Literature

“The Poet and the Fly --marked on every page by the breadth and depth of Robert Hudson's extraordinary reading--is one of those books that reminds us why art is so important. It vividly demonstrates how poets can wake us up--and in a culture that works so hard at numbing us into sleep, Hudson's work is no less than a blessing.”

The Surface of Water

Fiction

“The Surface of Water is a complex, richly interwoven story exploring the subtle—and not so subtle—allures of power and wealth, and the spiritual corruption that they encourage. As ministries and pastorates lose their way in this novel, the tensions that Cynthia Beach poses become more and more tangible—and recognizable to the modern church that can too easily embrace the contemporary culture it is called to question.”

Transfiguring

Arts & Literature

“Transfiguring is that unusual collection in which the distinctive voice of the poet is there every time, while the wide-ranging subjects of the poems are always a bit surprising. Whether Nathaniel Schmidt is musing on mythology or biblical tales, or on the personal past, or on the emotional rigors of pastoral care, or on the nature of writing itself, his language runs at the reader with a hard-edged, unflinching reality that always comes to the same place: the confident assurance that grace is in the offing.”