Jared Lemus’s robust, melancholy debut short story collection ‘Guatemalan Rhapsody’ gives us characters who strive for love, respect or mere survival in tales that unfold in Guatemalan towns or among immigrant communities in the United States.
Literature
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Riley Hughes, an unsung literary jack of all trades
It is not an exaggeration to say that between 1940 and 1980, the author and critic Riley Hughes reviewed well over 1,000 books for different Catholic magazines.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
The history (and future) of covering conclaves
‘America’ is covering its 10th papal conclave this week—and while the technology has changed, the content remains much the same.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Remembering Peru’s literary master, Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa’s long literary life established him as a monumental figure in Spanish-language literature and Latin American history.
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Pope Francis loved literature and film—and artists loved him for it
Pope Francis trusted the imagination and regarded it as a gift from God. Instead of being suspicious and fearful of its power, he urged artists to follow its promptings.
![20160811T1325-1001-CNS-POPE-SYRIAN-REFUGEES [web]](https://i0.wp.com/www.americamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/20160811T1325-1001-CNS-POPE-SYRIAN-REFUGEES-web.jpg-388895.jpg?resize=770%2C480&ssl=1)
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
Pope Francis the bookworm
Pope Francis was a great lover of literature: He peppered his homilies, talks and even encyclicals with literary references from Dostoyevsky, Proust, Hopkins, Dante and more, and he also encouraged his flock to read broadly and often.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Who will shape fiction’s future?
In ‘Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel, Edwin Frank explores how reality has been presented and even transformed through the way it is molded in fiction—and how the novel evolved from the 19th century novel to that of the 20th century.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Father Charles Strobel’s life of servant leadership
There is joy and heartbreak in Father Charles Strobel’s memoir, ‘The Kingdom of the Poor,’ but mostly joy.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Tara Isabella Burton’s fairy tale for grownups
If what we need now is the kind of story that restores wonder to the world, Tara Isabella Burton’s ‘Here in Avalon’ provides one avenue to that destination.
Posted inArts & Culture, Catholic Book Club
‘The Great Gatsby’ got a bad review in America. A century later, how do we see F. Scott Fitzgerald?
F. Scott Fitzgerald was not a favorite of America’s editors for many years, but they all read ‘Gatsby.’ Everyone reads ‘Gatsby.’