More than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature

by Joshua Hren

392 pages, Paperback

Published May 11, 2026

About the author

Joshua Hren is an novelist and critic, a father and husband. He is founder and editor of Wiseblood Books and co-founder of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Joshua regularly publishes essays and poems in such journals as The Los Angeles Review of Books and First Things, America and Public Discourse, New Polity and The Hedgehog Review, Plough and Commonweal, National Review and The University Bookman, and Religion and Literature and LOGOS.

Joshua is the author of ten books: the short story collections This Our Exile and In the Wine Press; a book of poems called Last Things, First Things, & Other Lost Causes; Middle-earth and the Return of the Common Good: J.R.R. Tolkien and Political Philosophy; How to Read (and Write) Like a Catholic; the novel Infinite Regress; and the theological-aesthetical manifesto Contemplative Realism. Joshua's More than a Matter of Taste: The Moral Imagination and the Spirit of Literature and Faith in the Furnace of Doubt: Dana Gioia's Poetics of Belief, are forthcoming. His second novel, Blue Walls Falling Down, was published in October of 2024.