At the suggestion of Brother Paul Quenon of the Abbey of Gethsemani (and novice under Thomas Merton), Fons Vitae has published an anthology entitled Monkscript, a format for creative writing of a high literary standard. It specializes in writings by authors inspired by monasteries, monastic life, and any contemplative style of living. Monkscript includes art and spirituality, as reflective of monastic life as well as contemplative living, as major fields of interest.

Monkscript offers the thoughtful reader poems, fiction, essays, art, meditations and interviews, written from the ambiance of monasticism, eastern and western, by those who live inside and outside of monasteries. Included are writings from such respected figures as Seamus Heaney, Thomas Moore, R.E. Sherwin, Huston Smith, Thomas Hopko, Steve Sanfeld, Bonnie Thurston and Robert Lax.

Monkscript is an anthology of poems, essays, interviews, and artwork by men and women inspired by monasteries, monastic life, and contemplative living in both Eastern and Western Traditions.  It describes their experiences of the marvelous, whether in mundane life or within the sacred realm.  The thirty-eight contributors range from a teenage boy who lived at a monastery for several months to well-established poets and professed monks and nuns.  Huston Smith, the renowned world religions scholar offered his interview entitled “Retreat”, Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney allowed the reprint of a poem and offered the first printing of “Colmcille the Scribe,” a translation of a poem from the eleventh-century Irish.

"I read slowly and carefully and with great enjoyment the first issue of MONKSCRIPT. May there be many more to follow. I loved Heaney's translation and poems. And those of Liliana Ursu, Marianne Micros, Heidi Hart, Judith King, Steve Sanfield, Paul Quenon (that was a great rendition of Pythagoras, and probably the freshest poem in the book), some of Tom Price's Axioms, Diane Westergaard and Vanessa Albrecht. The prose ranges from the good to the fascinating-- among which Huston Smith's talk on Retreat, and to me by far most fascinating Thomas Hopko's discussion of what lay people want from monks. So congratulations on the excellent quality... the look, the feel,the layout... all are impressive and pleasant to handle and read.

Congratulations....a fine work, doing precisely and well what it set out to do."

Richard Sherwin

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