Spiritual Focus on Books September 5, 2011 Issue

Writers who bring ‘delight to heaven’

Kim Shippey, Senior Editor

The Best Spiritual Writing 2011
Philip Zaleski, Editor
Penguin Books, New York
Paperback, 244 pages

In the 2010 offering in this series, editor and compiler Philip Zaleski remarked that among “spiritual writers,” we might find “undetected in the bulrushes, those whose hidden deeds bring delight to heaven” (see spirituality.com review).

Zaleski’s 2011 compilation—for those we might call literary-minded readers of all religious persuasions—reveals many more soul-nourishing gifts among this year’s “bulrushes.” They come from 20 essays and ten poems from well-established writers ranging from Pulitzer Prize-winner Philip Schultz to the Wall Street Journal’s drama critic Terry Teachout, who writes about the religious underpinnings in Flannery O’Connor’s fiction.

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