fiction

Colson Whitehead has created a world as compelling—and as intolerable—as our own.

By some estimates, three quarters of Americans don't really know their next-door neighbor.

Four teenage girls dance their way into friendship and maturity.

Does democracy create good neighbors? Or is it the other way around?

The lines between sacred history and contemporary life are wonderfully, miraculously blurred.

One pastor in New Orleans would end every examination by asking, “What is your favorite work of fiction?” The other ministers collectively groaned. But I applauded the question. To be in South Louisiana meant being in a land of stories. As this NYT article observed, South Louisiana is “a place that produces writers the way that France produces cheese—prodigiously, and with world-class excellence.”

Anthony C. Yu died this spring. I am still discovering the profound influence this teacher had on me.

“I am fascinated by the war between what is best in our natures and what is worst.”

Ron Rash’s stories emerge from the Smoky Mountains, where his protagonists often reach for a mystery beyond their own understanding.

Kyle Minor's second collection of short stories follows the success of his first, In the Devil's Territory, with acclaim. It is a beautiful work—and one that I believe promises more than it delivers.

Paul Elie has lamented the absence of serious engagement with Christianity in contemporary fiction. He should read Stacia Brown.

Like a lot of my preacher friends, I typically read nonfiction, theology, and fiction classics. So, it was a little different for me to delve into the world of hot-off-the-press page-turners. I did it for a year. This is what I learned.

“Two things about my own life became clear: I really did understand both sides, and I didn’t understand them at all.”

Reading Edwidge Danticat’s novel Claire of the Sea Light is like swimming through a gentle tide in a body of water known for riptides. The feeling that something invisible, fierce, and irreparable is just under the surface never quite leaves the corner of the reader’s mind. 

The story traces relational ties in Ville Rose, a small coastal village town in Haiti.

Might Christian nostalgia—wrapped in a cape dress and sealed with a kiss—have an interest in the future as well as the past?