What is “A Stylist Submits”?

An exploration of where Christian thought and world literature meet.

It is a newsletter of essays, book reviews, and poetry readings. For the foreseeable future, each newsletter will be free and open to anyone at all.

A note on the name and the intent:

“A Stylist Submits” is an aspiration and a two-way mirror.

Some days, I can barely use the word “writer” without feeling like a fraud, and so I couldn’t call myself a stylist without the twinge of a second guess. That word belongs polyglot Nabokov, razor-edged Enright, azure Banville; to the writers leagues beyond me. And yet, “stylist” is the perfect aspiration, because it’ll always lie just out of reach, just where I’ll strive endlessly to take it.

As for the titular verb, it names the action of the Christian and of the writer. The Christian submits, body and soul and mind and strength, to the God who demands it. The writer submits, poetry and prose and draft and gore, to the places that might like it. Both submissions come from a certain faith in reward, and both demand no small amount of vulnerability.

For another thing, “A Stylist Submits” does ape Stanislavski, who articulated the craft for an entire generation of actors. I can’t steal the man’s insights, profession, or reputation, but I’ll happily lift his eye for meticulous art.

And yes, the acronym is unfortunate, no point in covering or wiping that up.

Why subscribe?

You’ll receive thoughtful explorations—without having to seek them. I’ll put them in your inbox.

Many writers promise clean-cut answers. 3 Ways to Conquer This Year, Every Last Factoid That Will Impress Your Colleagues, and other rabbits from a hat. And many writers do deliver solid answers that make sense of things. We need definite, in-depth answers about the world just as we need the dedicated people that give them.

I’m just not one of those people. Blame it on the fiction and the poetry.

I’d rather explore the boundaries of faith and literature, to tease out where they overlap and where they’re impassable. That’s what you’ll receive in every email, whether it’s an essay, poem, or book review.

About Me

Here and there my poetry and fiction get published, along with occasional nonfiction in other venues. I’m also writing my second novel.

My wife and I live in North Carolina, where we duel for the appearance of our home—she wields lamps and plants, I wield novels and notebooks. We have a hound that forcibly rearranges the place regardless, and a young son to play in the wreckage.

Subscribe to A Stylist Submits

Literary Christianity, with humble rigor.

People

Christian writer and poet. I'm here, like I'm anywhere, for the Word and the words.