In Search of a Mennonite Imagination
Key Texts in Mennonite Literary Criticism

Edited by Robert Zacharias

Coming in 2025

• An anthology of the most important essays evaluating 150 years of writing about Mennonite literature in North America

• A detailed introduction by editor Robert Zacharias, York University

• A short introduction offering context for each essay, including bibliography for further reading and research

In Search of a Mennonite Imagination: Key Texts in Mennonite Literature Criticism brings the most significant essays in recent Mennonite literary criticism into conversation with a host of earlier work in the field.

On Mennonite/s Writing: Selected Essays

Hildi Froese Tiessen
edited and with an Introduction by Robert Zacharias

LITERARY CRITICISM / MENNONITE STUDIES
December 2023 | 318 pages | 6 x 9 paper | $34.00
Index, bibliography, 9 photos
ISBN 978-1-987986-12-9

Watch the livestream of the June 1 launch at McNally Robinson Booksellers

In 1973, Hildi Froese Tiessen published the first academic essay about Rudy Wiebe's fiction (included in this volume). Since then, in scholarly essays and talks, she has examined with great insight the literary careers of Di Brandt, Patrick Friesen, Julia Kasdorf, Sandra Birdsell, and David Waltner-Toews, as well as key origin figures like Arnold Dyck and Al Reimer. Dr. Froese Tiessen’s widely admired essays include several (among the first of their kind) which situate Mennonite literature in relation to postmodernism, as well as investigations of the sometimes disconcerting ethnic and theological assumptions about Mennonite artistic practice. The essays in On Mennonite/s Writing are the first solo collection of Dr. Tiessen’s writings, and she has written a major new piece especially for this publication.

Hildi Froese Tiessen is one of the foremost scholars of Mennonite literature today. Raised in Manitoba, Hildi Froese Tiessen earned a BA at the University of Winnipeg and an MA and PhD at the University of Alberta. She taught English and Peace & Conflict Studies (1987-2012) at Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo, where she also served as academic dean. She is the editor of Liars and Rascals (1989), an anthology of short fiction by Mennonite authors and, with Paul Tiessen, After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery's Letters to Ephraim Weber (2006).

"Hildi Froese Tiessen has played an essential role in the remarkable flowering of Mennonite/s writing over what is now half a century. The publication of this volume of her essays reveals anew the great generosity, critical acumen, and encyclopedic knowledge that Tiessen has offered to the Mennonite writing community—one that she has actively nurtured and guided into being over her long career as critic, editor, and organizer. This gathering is a great gift to anyone interested in that writing."

— Jeff Gundy, author of Walker in the Fog: On Mennonite Writing

On Being Human:
Essays from the Fifth Shi'i Muslim / Mennonite Christian Dialogue

Edited by Harry Huebner and Hajj Muhammad Legenhausen

2013 | 269 pages | paper | $15.00
ISBN 978-0-920718-94-0

A collection of dialogical essays around various topics pertaining to human nature and destiny from a theological perspective. The essays reflect the authors' ideas of how best to convey what they hold to be not only their personal beliefs, but also the beliefs of their communities, to an audience that is not expected to share these beliefs. Surprises abound as discussions reveal both astonishing similarities across religious convictions and differences in basic concepts where similarities were assumed.

Peace and Justice:
Essays from the Fourth Shi'i Muslim / Mennonite Christian Dialogue

Edited by Harry J. Huebner and Hajj Muhammad Legenhausen

2011 | 277 pages | paper | $10.00 from CommonWord
ISBN 978-0-920718-89-6

While the goal of inter-religious dialogue is sometimes thought to be a single religious understanding, that proves to be a mistake, and a dangerous one, because of its tendency to impose closure not warranted by intellectual honesty. The essays from this dialogue are lodged in another pursuit: of freely giving each person the voice to speak for his or her faith tradition. This posture of open engagement can be a mode of peacemaking: a way of engaging difference that is far from the view of the Other as enemy.