Joshua Hren

The thirteen stories in this collection track strained lives, characters compressed by the crises of our times, from clerical misdeeds to school shootings. Never settling for easy exits, these intense fictions portray a world distrustful of its former guides but populated still by souls searching and finding.

Short Stories

In the Wine Press

Michael P. Murphy

Jim Daniels

Orlando Ricardo Menes

Philip Metres

Maryann Corbett

Pat Brisson

Kim Bridgford

Daye Phillippo

Sheryl St. Germain

Mike Aquilina

Kathleen Marks

Susan Signe Morrison

Stephen Gibson

Jill Pelaez Baumgaertner

Susan L. Miller

Barbara Crooker

Paul Willis

Dean Kostos

Pablo Medina

Gail White

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Lynn Domina

Jeremiah Webster

Ned Balbo

Richard Cole

Jerry Harp

George Klawitter

C. X. Dillhunt

Julie L. Moore

Debra Bruce

James Matthew Wilson

D. S. Martin

Maryanne Hannan

Leonard Kress

Margaret Rozga

Joseph Bathanti

Richard Spilman

Tyler Farrell

Sharif Elmusa

Chelsea Martinez-Casiano

P. S. Dean

Alan Berecka

Tim Bete

Kathleen Bradley

Mary Buchinger

Roxana L. Cazan

Yuan Changming

Erica Charis-Molling

Joanna Currey

Jessica G. de Koninck

Dominic Gideon

Ed Granger

Lois Marie Harrod

Anne M. Higgins

Thomas Holahan

Siham Karami

Elaine Kehoe

Michael Angel Martin

Rhonda Miska

Robin Amelia Morris

Elizabeth Murawski

Stella Nesanovich

Matthew C. Nickel

Barry Peters

Mia Pohlman

Christopher Poore

Dennis Rhodes

Michael D. Riley

Lisa Toth Salinas

Nicholas Samaras

Janna Schledorn

Rita A. Simmonds

Sofia M. Starnes

Sophia Stid

Carole Stone

Maxine Susman

Maria Terrone

Brian Volck

Mark C. Watney

R. Bratten Weiss

Aleisa Zoecklin

Cydnee Devereaux

Jake Oresick

Mary Ladany

Juditha Dowd

Shanna Powlus Wheeler

Mia Schilling Grogan

New poems, translations, interviews, and book reviews in a yearly literary journal for Catholic Poetry.

: a Journal of Catholic Poetry

Presence

Political philosophy is nothing other than looking at things political under the aspect of eternity. This book invites us to look philosophically at political things in J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium, demonstrating that Tolkien's potent mythology can be brought into rich, fruitful dialogue with works of political philosophy and political theology as different as Plato's Timaeus, Aquinas' De Regno, Hobbes's Leviathan, and Erik Peterson's "Monotheism as a Political Problem." It concludes that a political reading of Tolkien's work is most luminous when conducted by the harmonious lights of fides et ratio as found in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. A broad study of Tolkien and the political is especially pertinent in that the legendarium operates on two levels. As a popular mythology it is, in the author's own words "a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them." But the stories of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings contain deeper teachings that can only be drawn out when read philosophically. Written from the vantage of a mind that is deeply Christian, Tolkien's stories grant us a revelatory gaze into the major political problems of modernity--from individualism to totalitarianism, sovereignty to surveillance, terror to technocracy. As an "outsider" in modernity, Tolkien invites us to question the modern in a manner that moves beyond reaction into a vivid and compelling vision of the common good.

J. R. R. Tolkien and Political Philosophy

Middle-earth and the Return of the Common Good

Political philosophy is nothing other than looking at things political under the aspect of eternity. This book invites us to look philosophically at political things in J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium, demonstrating that Tolkien’s potent mythology can be brought into rich, fruitful dialogue with works of political philosophy and political theology as different as Plato’s Timaeus, Aquinas’ De Regno, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Erik Peterson’s “Monotheism as a Political Problem.” It concludes that a political reading of Tolkien’s work is most luminous when conducted by the harmonious lights of fides et ratio as found in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. A broad study of Tolkien and the political is especially pertinent in that the legendarium operates on two levels. As a popular mythology it is, in the author’s own words “a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.” But the stories of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings contain deeper teachings that can only be drawn out when read philosophically. Written from the vantage of a mind that is deeply Christian, Tolkien’s stories grant us a revelatory gaze into the major political problems of modernity—from individualism to totalitarianism, sovereignty to surveillance, terror to technocracy. As an “outsider” in modernity, Tolkien invites us to question the modern in a manner that moves beyond reaction into a vivid and compelling vision of the common good.

This Our Exile brings together short stories preoccupied with the eternal questions-incarnating them afresh through the singularities that mark our secular age. Here is a vibrant contribution to contemporary Catholic fiction that pinpoints those places in the heart that can come into existence only through suffering.

This Our Exile

Joshua Hren

Books

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