Our dock serves as harbor to diverse vessels of literature: minimalist or stream of consciousness; metaphysical thriller or epistolary novel; great works in fresh translation; collection of vignettes or thousand-page opus; formalist poetry or political memoir. We seek contemporary fiction and poetry that inherits and inhabits: the sublimity and universality of such epic works as Homer's Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Dante's Divine Comedy; of works as demanding and rewarding as Joyce's Ulysses; of works as historically-conscious and yet time-transcendent as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter; of works as polyphonic as Dostoevsky's Devils; of verse devoted to the preservation of form in an age of unmaking; of works as complexly comic as David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, Jane Austen's Persuasion, or Flannery O' Connor's Wise Blood. We are watchful for works written in a contemporary idiom that yet reach the roots of fundamental questions, that honor the almost three-thousand-year-long conversations committed to these questions, and that incite our hunger for the splendor of truth.
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Joshua Hren is founder of Wiseblood Books and co-founder of the MFA at the University of St. Thomas. Joshua also co-founded the Honors College at Belmont Abbey. His writing has appeared in such journals as The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, First Things, Dappled Things, National Review, Commonweal, America, The University Bookman, LOGOS, Public Discourse, and The Hedgehog Review. Joshua is the author of ten books: the short story collections This Our Exile and In the Wine Press; a book of poems called Last Things, First Things, & Other Lost Causes; Middle-earth and the Return of the Common Good: J.R.R. Tolkien and Political Philosophy; How to Read (and Write) Like a Catholic; the novels Infinite Regress and Blue Walls Falling Down; and the theological-aesthetical manifesto Contemplative Realism. Joshua's More than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature is forthcoming from Word on Fire (2026) and Faith in the Furnace of Doubt: Dana Gioia's Visionary Poetics is forthcoming from Catholic University of America Press (2025).
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Mary worked as a Registered Nurse in various settings, including the operating room and the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She is now a freelance editor and writer. Mary earned a BA in English, a BS in Nursing, and earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Mary’s poetry, essays, and stories can be found in Ekstasis, Lydwine Journal, American Journal of Nursing, Catholic Digest, Amethyst Review, and elsewhere. She is the social media editor at Dappled Things.
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Assistant Editor
Kathy West Copyeditors and
Student Interns |
Kathy writes fiction and essays. She spent a decade as a copywriter, drafting marketing emails and sales pages for online teachers and her own small business. She is currently a student in the MFA program at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Her writing has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Apalachee Review, Oxford Magazine, and elsewhere. An introvert who likes talking into microphones, she has performed her personal stories on stage in a variety of storytelling venues.
Brittney is, among a litany of things, the architect of thoughtfulness and order.
We are grateful to the very fine work of our copyeditors, proofreaders, and student interns who help keep our press alive, not least: Kate Weaver and J.A. Gray |
