Led by Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author and instructor in the MFA in Creative Writing program, the third panel discussion event in this semester’s Inspired Writers Series will be held virtually, featuring top editors and writers Katy Carl and Christopher Beha on thequicklive.com for their talk, "New Catholic Novelists and Editors."

“Chris Beha and Katy Cary are shaping both national and intra-Catholic conversations through their work as editors and novelists,” said Klay. “Their engagements with our modern preoccupations and malaises are connected to their Catholic faith, and both are pushing the Catholic imagination in new directions.”

A decade ago, Paul Elie asked in the pages of The New York Times, “Where has the novel of belief gone?” Since then, a new crop of Catholic writers and editors has sprung up, answering the question. Christopher Beha is the editor of Harper’s and the renowned author of the novels What Happened to Sophie Wilder and the National Book Award finalist The Index of Self-Destructive Acts. Katy Carl has served as the editor-in-chief of the Catholic literary magazine Dappled Things, and is the author of the new novel As Earth Without Water. They will discuss the state of Catholic literature in 2022, as well as the way faith informs their own work.

A veteran himself, Klay is at the helm of the Fairfield MFA veterans’ community, leading workshops and supporting veteran writers. He served in Iraq’s Anbar Province as a public affairs officer before receiving his MFA from Hunter College of The City University of New York. His short story collection Redeployment won the 2014 National Book Award, and Missionaries was chosen by former President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2020, and was also named among “The 10 Best Books of 2020” by The Wall Street Journal.

Most recently, Klay compiled a new collection of his non-fiction writing called Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War, published by Penguin Press. The pieces in Uncertain Ground, collected from publications that span the last ten years, explore the chasm between the military and the civilian in American life, and the moral blind spot it has created.

The New York Times called Klay’s compilation “engrossing and important” and Publisher’s Weekly deemed it an “incisive collection . . . Enriched by the author’s military experiences and sharp turns of phrase.” The Library Journal offered that Klay’s book is “an important and eye-opening essay collection that should be a must-read.”

For information about the Inspired Writers Series, please visit quickcenter.com