Life and Hope in the Valley of Death

The Reverend Connor Gwin hosts a conversation with Christian Wiman.Christian Wiman has authored four books of poetry; published a memoir, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer; a collection of essays; and is also an anthologist of several works, including Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023). Wiman is also widely known for his tenure as editor of Poetry magazine, from 2003 to 2013. Wiman is now on the faculty of Yale University, where he teaches courses on Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. His particular interests include modern poetry, the language of faith, “accidental” theology (that is, theology conducted by unexpected means), and what it means to be a Christian intellectual in a secular culture. Born on August 31, 1966, in West Texas, poet, editor, and essayist Christian Wiman earned his BA from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, in 1988. In 2005, on his thirty-ninth birthday, Wiman was diagnosed with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, an incurable form of blood cancer. Wiman’s poetry and prose frequently address the disease and his response to it, as well as questions of theology and faith, life and death.