In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Jim Hanink and Valerie Niemeyer interview Karina Fabian, the president of The Catholic Writers Guild. (March 20, 2024)

We discuss all things literary. For a start, was Walker Percy, as a naysayer claimed, the last Catholic novelist? We don’t think so. And what’s the range of the “literary”? It includes, of course, non-fiction. It welcomes poets and dramatists. But what about bloggers and podcasters? Just how ecumenical should we be? Our welcome guest is Karina Fabian. She is the new president of the Catholic Writers Guild, an association committed to the development of Catholic arts and letters. The following are among the questions we’ll be asking her. 

1. Karina, if we may, could you fill us in about the history of the Catholic Writers Guild
2. How did you—a self-described geek, teacher, humorist, and Miata driver—come to be involved in the Guild?
3. How does the Guild help authors and readers? Book stores and publishers?
4. What is your advice for aspiring writers who have not yet published any of their work?
5. The Guild is serious about core Catholic values. In what ways does it promote these values?
6. What makes a book distinctively Catholic? Did Graham Greene and Flannery O’Connor write distinctively Catholic novels and short stories?
7. Has the internet helped or harmed our literary capacities? Can we sit still long enough to read and write serious literature?
8. Who are some little known contemporary Catholic writers that we ought to become familiar with?
9. Can you tell us a bit about some of the publishers that your members have worked with?
10. Writers, so they say, (mostly) stay in and write. What are you working on these days? And is it true that you hate zombies?