I am increasingly excited by the signs of a new Catholic Revival in the arts. There are several very gifted novelists writing today and an increasing number of small Catholic publishers willing to publish new Catholic fiction. As a response to this new springtime for Catholic literature, the Center for Faith and Culture at Aquinas College in Nashville, of which I am the Director, has launched the Aquinas Award for Fiction. Apart from fiction, there is also a host of exciting new Catholic poets. We do our best to publish this new verse in the “New Voices” feature in the St. Austin Review and will continue to do so. In addition, Kaufmann Publishing has an impressive catalogue of new volumes of Catholic verse by an exciting new generation of poets.
The new springtime is not limited to literature. In the visual arts, there are many Catholic artists producing work of the finest quality, most notably Igor Babailov, who I recently had the honour of interviewing. Again, as part of our mission to reclaim and revitalize Catholic culture, we continue to feature the work of these artists in the full-colour art feature in each issue.
Nor is music unrepresented in the new revival. The compositions of Michael Kurek are simply superb and I’m honoured that he has agreed to speak about his ballet, Macbeth, at the Center for Faith and Culture’s Shakespeare and Christianity Celebration next spring. Apart from Susan Treacy’s regular music column in the St. Austin Review, we have featured Kurek’s work in our pages and also the work of the wonderful California-based composer, Frank La Rocca. The latter’s work is celebrated this week in Catholic World Report:
Thank you for publishing ‘new’ and ’emerging’ poets who are not also ‘young’. Some of us are only now emerging because we’ve fulfilled other vocations first. It can be discouraging to see everyone looking for worthy Catholic artists only among the young.