If you enter into conversations about art and faith and/or writing and faith, the topic may turn to Christians who make art and write outside of distinctly Christian circles and outside of Christian publishing. You may begin to discuss books and writers who write about faith but don’t write explicitly ABOUT FAITH. My use of all caps is my way of saying there are some books that are ABOUT FAITH like in a major way, in an obvious way that’s stated by the author and they use words like “Mary, Jesus, God, etc.” and are well-known within Christian circles and Christian publishing by people who don’t really think much about the intersection of art and faith.

If this topic comes up, some of the same names will be mentioned over and over, names like Flannery O’Connor, J. R. R. Tolkien, Wendell Berry, and Marilynne Robinson. (Also, most of the Christian writers usually mentioned during these conversations are white Christian writers.) The people mentioned are all wonderful writers, but I have been trying to track down who else might be out there. And, those who have these conversations can sometimes be too fancy, too exclusive, too intellectual, and too dismissive of certain genres. We don’t have to be fancy all of the time.

Who are the Christian writers out there who don’t write primarily about their faith who we don’t hear about? And, more specifically, which of those writers are good writers? Who is doing excellent work? Who has been ignored or forgotten because they are writers of color? I want to read more fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction, and poetry that aren’t CHRISTIAN WRITING but still have threads of faith. I want to see how writers’ faith informs their writing—their craft, their subjects, their language, their characters, their story arcs.

Here’s a question I posted on Twitter yesterday: Who are writers of faith (any faith) who don’t write BOOKS ABOUT FAITH?

I added this: Pretend I know nothing. Obscure ones, the big ones, everyone in between.

I included “(any faith)” because I’m also interested in how people of other faiths do this. I’d also like to explore how the faith of writers who aren’t Christians informs their writing.

Several people responded with all kinds of names of writers who fit within these parameters. I’ve compiled that list below and will try to add to it as I come across other names via Twitter or through my reading or through random interviews with writers that happen to mention their faith.

I know what some of you are thinking. Yes, it's hard to put boundaries around this. Many people say all writers are writers of faith, all writing is an act of faith, all writing is about faith. I don’t disagree. Pretty much everything I read hints at someone who’s trying to believe something, who wants to believe somthing, who no longer believes what they used to believe, who thought they didn’t believe anything but belief keeps sneaking in uninvited.

I had a short exchange on Twitter with Todd Dillard, a wonderful poet I’ve connected with there. He had recently posted this: “God keeps popping up in my poems and He sounds exactly like that one church usher who says HELLO then also lets you know he hasn’t seen you in three weeks and seems vaguely disappointed you’re not dead but also jubilant you’re here, you’re back, etc.”

I tagged him in my thread about writers of faith and said maybe Todd is one such writer of faith who doesn’t explicitly write about faith. He responded, “I don’t consider myself a writer of faith I just have a very southern church boy background, my past bleeds into my present like watercolors.” And I clarified, asking if this is accurate: “That counts I think. There’s an older, former faith or exposure to the things of faith, that you haven’t completely outrun yet. (Does that sound accurate?)” He said yep. He didn’t disagree with my assessment.

But now I don’t think he really fits within the parameters even though I said so initially. He says he doesn’t consider himself a writer of faith. This is an example of how it’s not cut and dry. There are blurry lines and gray areas just like everything else in life.

The list below contains many names others have provided. Some I know, others I’ve never heard of. I didn’t them through some sort of test or check off a list to see if they belong on this list. I do think the list is too white so I hope to add more name of people who aren’t white. And I haven’t counted, but it probably needs more gender diversity, too. Also, some of these writers may write ABOUT FAITH but they also write other work that’s not ABOUT FAITH.

Maybe some of these writers would object to being included. Maybe some readers and scholars would object to some who are included. People are welcome to argue. Those are good discussions to have.

Now we can stop talking about the same writers over and over. We can branch out and explore other work by some of these authors below. We can discuss new books and writers we’ve discovered and share them with others.

If you know of a writer who you think belongs on this list, please let me know. You can post a comment or email me at charlotte@charlottedonlon.com.

Many thanks to everyone who responded on Twitter and beyond. I really appreciate it!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Edoardo Albert

Uwem Akpan

W.H. Auden

Jane Austen

Chris Beha

Wendell Berry

Bryan Bliss

Charlotte Brontë

Emily Brontë

Brené Brown

Pearl Buck

Mikhail Bulgakov

Agnes Callard

Orson Scott Card

GK Chesterton

Susanna Clarke

Frank Cottrell

Walter de la Mare

Kate DiCamillo

Charles Dickens

Emily Dickinson

Annie Dillard

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Brian Doyle

Ruth Dowson

Bob Dylan

T. S. Eliot

David Ellefson

Shusaku Endo

Leif Enger

Louise Erdrich

Dana Gioia

Diane Glancy

Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Graham Greene

John Grisham

Barbara Bradley Hagerty

Seth T. Hahne

Ron Hansen

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Silas House

P.D. James

Denis Johnson

Chad Jones

Mary Karr

Phil Kay

Stephen King

Barbara Kingsolver

Anne Lamott

Ursula K LeGuin

Madeleine L'Engle

Denise Levertov

Barry Lopez

George MacDonald

Maurice Manning

Gabriel García Márquez

Cormac McCarthy

Jon Meacham

Czeslaw Milosz

Amanda K. Morgan

Toni Morrison

Amit Majmudar

Yann Martel

Barack Obama

Michelle Obama

Flannery O’Connor

Mary Oliver

Anne Overstreet

Jeffrey Overstreet

Kogan Page

Anne Patchett

Walker Percy

Lousie Penny

Edgar Allan Poe

Shannon Huffman Polson

Marilynne Robinson

Richard Rodriguez

J.K. Rowling

Mary Doria Russell

Brandon Sanderson

Dorothy Sayers

Gary Schmidt

Dani Shapiro

Nathan Shumate

Leesa Cross Smith

Muriel Spark

Wallace Stegner

Donna Tartt

Brock & Bodie Thoene

Howard Thurman

Leo Tolstoy

Sigrid Undset

John Updike

Laura Vanderkam

David Foster Wallace

Evelyn Waugh

James Matthew Wilson

Tobias Wolff

Gene Luen Yang

Marly Youmans

Lee Young-Li

Sara Zarr

*Image of stacks of books by Ed Robertson

Find Charlotte at Bookshop.org

Charlotte Donlon is a writer, a spiritual director for writers, and the founder and host of the Our Faith in Writing podcast and website. Charlotte’s writing and work are rooted in noticing how art helps us belong to ourselves, others, God, and the world. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Curator, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Catapult, The Millions, Mockingbird, and elsewhere. Her first book is The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. You can subscribe to her newsletter and connect with her onTwitter and Instagram.