Michael O’Brien to receive Aquinas Award for Fiction

The 2016 Aquinas Award for Fiction will be given to Michael D. O’Brien for his novel Elijah in Jerusalem at Aquinas College’s Second Annual Tolkien & Lewis Celebration in Nashville, Tennessee. Joseph Pearce, the acclaimed literary biographer and director of the Center for Faith and Culture, will present the award to Mr. O’Brien, who will be at the event to accept.

The Aquinas Award for Fiction is judged by a panel of five judges appointed by Mr. Pearce. Last year’s award went to Ignatius Press author Lucy Beckett for her historical novel The Leaves are Falling.

“I was looking for ways in which the Center could serve as a catalyst for a new Catholic literary revival. It seemed that launching the Aquinas Award for Fiction would serve in this way as a means of encouraging Catholic novelists and their publishers,” explained Joseph Pearce in an interview with Ignatius Press Novels last year.

Apart from the presentation of the Aquinas Award for Fiction, the Second Annual Tolkien & Lewis Celebration will include talks and presentations from authors such as Joseph Pearce, Fr. Dwight Longenecker, Michael Ward, Devin Brown, and Hal Poe, and a performance by Kevin O’Brien and the Theatre of the Word.

The event takes place at Aquinas College in Nashville on Saturday, September 17, 2016.

To learn more or RSVP for the event, click here.


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About John Herreid 4 Articles
John Herreid is catalog manager at Ignatius Press. In addition to catalogs and ads, he has also worked on the cover design for many Ignatius Press books and DVDs.