One year ago, in the December 2013 First Things issue, Dana Gioia regretted the decline of the Catholic writer in America. Whereas the mid-twentieth century literary scene was packed with Catholics (Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Walker Percy, Jack Kerouac, Donald Westlake, Allen Tate, Robert Fitzgerald, Claude McKay, Claire Boothe Luce, Robert Giroux, Hugh Kenner), Gioia noted, today’s “aggressively secular literary culture” allows for only a few of them (Alice McDermott, Tobias Wolff, Richard Rodriguez).
Gioia placed part of the blame on a loss of institutional support. Politics and law predominate in Catholic media, and the Church itself has lost its aesthetic sensibility (Gioia pointed to new churches as a sign of artistic banality).
Yesterday came an announcement that reverses the trend and should inspire younger Catholic writers. It is the George W. Hunt Prize, which will give $25,000 for the best book of “Roman Catholic intelligence” written by an author under forty-five years of age. The sponsors are America Magazine and St. Thomas More Chapel at Yale University, and the benefactor is Fay Vincent.
According to this Washington Post story, winners may come from any genre, from verse to journalism to music to scholarship, though the authors must have a sound character and no record of publishing anything that displays atheism or “moral offense.”
The first winner will be honored next year in a ceremony at Yale.
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