KATY CARL
Katy Carl is the author of As Earth Without Water (Wiseblood Books, 2021) and of Praying the Great O Antiphons: My Soul Magnifies the Lord (Catholic Truth Society, 2021) and is editor in chief of Dappled Things magazine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Windhover, Vita Poetica, Belle Ombre, Across the Margin, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, Evangelization & Culture, Genealogies of Modernity, St. Louis magazine, and the National Catholic Register, among others.
A senior affiliate fellow of Penn’s Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, Katy is pursuing her MFA in creative writing at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. She was honored to be the inaugural Wiseblood Books Writer in Residence in 2020.
Praise for As Earth Without Water
"Katy Carl’s As Earth Without Water is a sharp and moving meditation on freedom, choice, and the creative life. 'Art is from the soul,' one of Carl’s lost painters insists; this novel certainly reads like it is."
—Christopher Beha, Editor of Harper’s, author of What Happened to Sophie Wilder and The Index of Self-Destructive Acts
"Katy Carl gives us a vision of love that refuses to be caught up in consoling fantasy. Amidst the darkness of human sin and self-deception, Carl reveals the true complexity, depth, and promise of human longing. A powerful and stunning debut novel. Carl is an artist whose cleverness and skill is tied to a clear vision of reality, and I cannot wait to see what she does next."
—Jennifer Frey, host of the literary podcast Sacred and Profane Love
Fragile Objects, Katy Carl’s much-anticipated debut short story collection, did not stir the literary streams for nothing. Katy ruminates on the New York City launch over at her Substack Depth-Perception HERE (Trevor Cribben Merrill also read from his novel Minor Indignities at the Arthouse 2B event). This follow-up to her debut novel As Earth Without Water proves beyond a reasonable doubt that we are watching a writer of rare talent. In First Things, Glenn Arbery situates Carl as a new and very different heir to our press’ patroness Flannery O’Connor: “one cannot help but recognize the risks she takes as a writer. She never goes the way of harmless revelation. These stories lodge in the mind uncomfortably and call for another reading—and still another—as the best stories do.” Nick Ripatrazone concludes that "Authentic, meaningful fiction [ can ] only be created by writers who love[] their characters — in all of their follies, paradoxes, and sins. Katy Carl loves her characters." In Our Sunday Visitor, Mike Mastromatteo finds the complexities of the collection “meshing to invite readers to reflect on such intangible concerns as spiritual restlessness, motivation, confusion, doubt and inescapable yearning.” John-Paul Heil, who praised Carl’s As Earth Without Water in the Los Angeles Review of Books, celebrates her short stories’ dramatizations of our sundry vulnerabilities—and the tragic weight of our often neglected souls, in Fare Forward. Mary Grace Mangano revisits Carl’s work in the pages of America, Shemiah Gonzales praises Katy’s brilliance on Undaunted Joy, and Seth Wieck and Carl share this rich Socratic dialogue–an education in itself–with us in Front Porch Republic.
Her chapbook Christopher Beha: Novelist in a Postsecular World is available HERE.
Katy Carl is the author of As Earth Without Water (Wiseblood Books, 2021) and of Praying the Great O Antiphons: My Soul Magnifies the Lord (Catholic Truth Society, 2021) and is editor in chief of Dappled Things magazine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Windhover, Vita Poetica, Belle Ombre, Across the Margin, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, Evangelization & Culture, Genealogies of Modernity, St. Louis magazine, and the National Catholic Register, among others.
A senior affiliate fellow of Penn’s Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, Katy is pursuing her MFA in creative writing at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. She was honored to be the inaugural Wiseblood Books Writer in Residence in 2020.
Praise for As Earth Without Water
"Katy Carl’s As Earth Without Water is a sharp and moving meditation on freedom, choice, and the creative life. 'Art is from the soul,' one of Carl’s lost painters insists; this novel certainly reads like it is."
—Christopher Beha, Editor of Harper’s, author of What Happened to Sophie Wilder and The Index of Self-Destructive Acts
"Katy Carl gives us a vision of love that refuses to be caught up in consoling fantasy. Amidst the darkness of human sin and self-deception, Carl reveals the true complexity, depth, and promise of human longing. A powerful and stunning debut novel. Carl is an artist whose cleverness and skill is tied to a clear vision of reality, and I cannot wait to see what she does next."
—Jennifer Frey, host of the literary podcast Sacred and Profane Love
Fragile Objects, Katy Carl’s much-anticipated debut short story collection, did not stir the literary streams for nothing. Katy ruminates on the New York City launch over at her Substack Depth-Perception HERE (Trevor Cribben Merrill also read from his novel Minor Indignities at the Arthouse 2B event). This follow-up to her debut novel As Earth Without Water proves beyond a reasonable doubt that we are watching a writer of rare talent. In First Things, Glenn Arbery situates Carl as a new and very different heir to our press’ patroness Flannery O’Connor: “one cannot help but recognize the risks she takes as a writer. She never goes the way of harmless revelation. These stories lodge in the mind uncomfortably and call for another reading—and still another—as the best stories do.” Nick Ripatrazone concludes that "Authentic, meaningful fiction [ can ] only be created by writers who love[] their characters — in all of their follies, paradoxes, and sins. Katy Carl loves her characters." In Our Sunday Visitor, Mike Mastromatteo finds the complexities of the collection “meshing to invite readers to reflect on such intangible concerns as spiritual restlessness, motivation, confusion, doubt and inescapable yearning.” John-Paul Heil, who praised Carl’s As Earth Without Water in the Los Angeles Review of Books, celebrates her short stories’ dramatizations of our sundry vulnerabilities—and the tragic weight of our often neglected souls, in Fare Forward. Mary Grace Mangano revisits Carl’s work in the pages of America, Shemiah Gonzales praises Katy’s brilliance on Undaunted Joy, and Seth Wieck and Carl share this rich Socratic dialogue–an education in itself–with us in Front Porch Republic.
Her chapbook Christopher Beha: Novelist in a Postsecular World is available HERE.
