Barbara Nicolosi wonders where the great contemporary Catholic writers are

Well, anyway, I was chatting with a friend writer recently about getting together a Catholic writers conference next year, but then we hit on a problem. Who would be the star writers whom we could invite, who would attract legions of Catholic writers out of their solitude and onto airplanes, and then to a faraway city for a convention? Who are the Catholic writers today whose work will be read in fifty or a hundred years? Graham Greene, Flannery O’Connor, Tolkien and Chesterton were all stars while they were alive. People knew they were great. Who are the great writers today, whose work will last? I am thinking primarily fiction here, although even non-fiction circles would make for an interesting debate. My sense is, there is a lot of assimilation and identification going on with writers who say things we like, but there isn’t a lot of great writing going on. So, I put the question out, who are the great writers today who we could identify as Catholic? And be careful… Just because someone has written a few books for Ignatius Press, does not make him a great novelist. Au contraire. t is always a red flag to me that these writers wouldbe published by a Catholic house. The great Catholic writers of the past were absolutely commercial in the secular marketplace.

So, where are they? Who would you come to a Catholic writers conference to see?

Sounds like a fascinating conversation! Wow!

Anyway…who are they? There have been some really solid fiction written by Catholics and/or with Catholic tropes, sensibilities and imagery in recent years (and some not-so-solid works). Tim Gautreaux’s stories. Lying Awake by Mark Salzman. John L’Heureux. Ron Hansen. Hungry Ghost by Keith Kachtick, which while written by a Buddhist, has a completely believable, deep and honest main Catholic character who informs the narrative profoundly. I find Richard Russo’s work very deeply, albeit subtlely Catholic, if you’re going to push me.

But no…for myself I can’t think of where the writers of the stature Barb is looking for might be.