(Westminster John Knox Press)

In this collection of essays, short stories, and poems, the author reflects on experiences in his life and on commonplace activities in which he finds the presence of the divine — a drive with his elderly mother, the death of an aunt, the struggles of a disabled relative. An ordained Presbyterian minister, Buechner is the author of Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner.

(Oxford)

In this essay collection, the author revisits a fake scholarly paper — a parody of postmodern research and an attack on relativism — that he submitted to an academic journal, which published it in 1996. Sokal argues that the issue he raised — postmodernists’ disregard for evidence — remains pressing, particularly among pseudoscientists and religions, which, he claims, promote as “truth” ideas that lack factual evidence. Sokal is a physics professor at New York University.

(Louisiana State University Press)

Winner of the 2007 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, the poems in this collection mix narrative, painterly images, and linguistic ambivalence as they explore the struggle between mind and body. The author ruminates on sex, marriage, and the imprecise nature of language. Van Doren teaches creative writing in the St. Louis public schools.