Friday Links, May 7, 2021
News about some doings of Dappled Things' friends:
+ Vermilion—a New Literary Magazine at Catholic University of America
+ Rod Dreher Interviews James Matthew Wilson on a New MFA in Creative Writing
+ Essay from Joshua Hren's Hot Off the Press Book
+ Article about Visual Artist Anthony Santella's Work
Vermilion Magazine of Literature and the Arts
Dappled Things Editor in Chief Katy Carl recommends the above link—an announcement in the Catholic University of America May 2021 Newsletter about the launch of Vermilion, a new online magazine of literature and the arts for university students, faculty, and alumni. They held a contest for a name for the new publication, and this is from the winning essay:
Vermilion is a deep shade of scarlet red. Used by Renaissance painters for dramatic effect, it is bold, beautiful, a tribute to life, ordinary and extraordinary. This hue of red is both the simple scarlet of a lover’s blush and the dramatic sign of sacrifice. 'Vermilion' is also the closing word of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem, 'The Windhover.' Like Hopkins’s falcon, literature seems to soar in celestial beauty while being rooted in the soil of everyday life. Creative writers seem tasked to unite vast imagination with concrete words. Their craft teems with the vibrancy of vermilion. This magazine seeks to share this beautiful craft, which shines like a color so fully alive.”
James Matthew Wilson Lights A Candle
Katy Carl shared this link to an interview by Rod Dreher of James Matthew Wilson at The American Conservative. James Matthew Wilson and Joshua Hren are joining forces against the darkness facing writers who want to learn how to write like Catholics—by founding a new MFA program in Creative Writing at St. Thomas University.
Earlier this spring, the University of St. Thomas in Houston announced the founding of a Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing. What sets it apart is that it will be thoroughly Catholic, and led by one of the most gifted poets alive today, James Matthew Wilson, who is leaving Villanova University to help run the program. . . . He is a deeply literate man, and a thoroughly orthodox Catholic. I sat in one of his Villanova undergraduate classes once, and saw that he is one of the most gifted teachers I’ve ever been around."—Rod Dreher
Divine Ironies
Congratulations to Joshua Hren! His How to Read (and Write) Like a Catholic was just published this week by TAN Books (on Tuesday, May 4, 2021). The above link (another Katy Carl recommendation) brings you to an essay Hren adapted from his new book. You might want to read the essay to get the flavor of the book— before you buy it and thereby make your own contribution towards the resurgence of Catholic fiction and towards the education of the kind of discerning Catholic readers O'Connor wrote about needing.Also, you might want to get a flavor of what one of Hren's courses might be like in the new MFA program in Creative Writing by signing up for one or more of his three remaining classes in the "Christ-Haunted Fiction" course sponsored by Catholic Literary Arts.At least that's what I'm doing. After taking this week's class on Gustav Flaubert's A Simple Heart, I'm hooked. The remaining class topics are as follows:
Class Two: Evelyn Waugh's "Love Among the Ruins" on May 11
Class Three: Flannery O'Connor's "The Lame Shall Enter First" on May 18
Class Four: Ernest Hemingway's "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" on May 25
Anthony Santella Article in Christians in Visual Arts
Katy Carl also writes, "Congrats to visual artist Anthony Santella (of the stunning blue seraphim from our SSPP 2020 issue)!" Natalie Morrill, DT Fiction Editor, and Karen Barbre Ullo, former DT Managing Editor, liked the idea.
Exciting to finally see my article for the @christiansinvisualarts journal #seen in print. It was a strange but good experience to write about some very personal pieces from (another) difficult time."—Anthony Santella
