MFA Reading List: The Crowdsourced Edition
Books, Essays, and Publications for Writers Seeking the Good, the True, and the Beautiful
Two weeks ago, I made an announcement and invited responses. Thank you to everyone who contributed! Is this the final authoritative list? Well, no. Is it a really good list? Yes, I’d say so. One note on methodology: I’m taking the classics—any Great Books older than 80-100 years, and of course, the Greco-Roman Classics—as essential reading without mentioning most of them specifically, unless someone brought up a specific book. In addition to the list below, I am honored to run novelist
’s guest post about his own list—and more!—this Saturday.Books and Essays
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Aristotle, Poetics
Augustine, Confessions and City of God
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Christopher Beha, What Happened to Sophie Wilder
Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter; Jayber Crow; What Are People For? (really, everything Berry has ever written needs to be on this list, right?)
Jeffrey Bilbro, Reading the Times; Words for Conviviality
Elizabeth Bruenig, “How to Write Beautiful Stories About Hideous Things”; “Some Advice for Rising Christian Writers”
Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark; Telling the Truth
, As Earth Without WaterWilla Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop; My Antonia
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell; Piranesi; The Wood at Midwinter
David Damrosch, Around the World in 80 Books
Dante, Inferno; Purgatory; Paradise
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; The Writing Life
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment; Brothers Karamazov; The Idiot; Devils
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
George Elliot, Middlemarch
Shusaku Endo, Stained Glass Elegies; The Final Martyrs; Silence
Leif Enger, Peace Like a River; I Cheerfully Refuse
Jon Fosse, “On Writing as an Act of Listening”; Morning and Evening; Trilogy
Makoto Fujimura, Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life; Art + Faith: A Theology of Making; Art Is: A Journey Into the Light
Dana Gioia, Weep, Shudder, Die: On Opera and Poetry; Poetry as Enchantment
Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede
Malcolm Guite, Lifting the Veil; Waiting on the Word; Word in the Wilderness; Sounding the Seasons
Joshua Hren, Contemplative Realism: A Theological-Aesthetical Manifesto
Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These
Stephen King, On Writing
Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
Christopher Lasch, Plain Style: A Guide to Written English
Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet
Amit Majmudar, Godsong: A Verse Translation of the Bhagavad-Gita; The Great Game: Essays on Poetics; Twin A: A Memoir
Micah Mattix and Sally Thomas, Christian Poetry in America: Since 1940
Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black; How Far to the Promised Land
John McPhee, Draft No. 4
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue
Flannery O’Connor, The Complete Stories
Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook; Devotions
Paul J. Pastor, The Locust Years; “Can Christians Write?"
Eugene Peterson, Take and Read
Plato, Republic
Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well;You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the Good, the True, and the Beautiful
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
Russ Ramsey, Rembrandt is in the Wind; Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping; Gilead
George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just
J.C. Scharl, Sonnez Les Matines, A Verse Play; The Death of Rabelais
Antonin Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods
Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Gossip on Romance” (or here)
A.E. Stallings, Like: Poems; This Afterlife: Selected Poems; Frieze Frame
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose; The Spectator Bird; Crossing to Safety
Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace; Anna Karenina
Eugene Vodolazkin, A History of the Island; Laurus; The Aviator; Solovyov and Larionov; Brisbane
, The Elegy Beta; “The Top 25 Poetry Books of the Century”Jessica Hooten Wilson, The Scandal of Holiness; Reading for the Love of God
Christian Wiman, Zero at the Bone
Little Magazines and Other Publications for Creative Writing
Many of these publications do not specialize in creative writing, but all publish at least some creative nonfiction and poetry.
Acton Institute/Religion & Liberty
Current (concluded publication in April 2025, but the full archive is available, and filled with gems, such as Paul Pastor’s manifesto “Can Christians Write?")
New Verse Review/New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry
Places Lost and Found: Travel Essays from the Hudson Review
Punctured Lines: Post-Soviet Literature in and outside the Soviet Union (especially recommend this essay: Maria Bloshteyn, “A Motherland of Books”
University Bookman (Russell Kirk Center)
Wiseblood Books—complete collection of poetry and poetry-related monographs; Essays in Contemporary Culture
If you’re looking for contemporary lit writers Mary Karr is a must for memoir. Kathleen Norris too. Brian Doyle’s One Long River of Song but also everything he ever wrote. Sonja Livingston, Addie Zierman, and Tania Runyan are also excellent. Daniel Bowman Jr. has a great memoir on autism and faith. Jessie Van Eerden’s The Long Weeping. Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss. So many great writers doing great work!
You might add three Christian lit mags to your list: Relief Journal, Rock + Sling, and Image. Also by L’Engle Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art.