This is my interview column where I feature some of my personal heroes. These are men and women who are addressing some of the most important challenges of our time.
Paul Elie is a senior fellow with the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. He is the author of The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (2003), a group portrait of the American Catholic writers Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day, and Reinventing Bach (2012). He writes for the Times, the Atlantic, Commonweal, and his website, Everything That Rises.
I have heard that there is a crucial difference between an important writer and a great writer, but for me Paul Elie is both an important and great writer. Reading his work makes me feel more human, and more reflective on our human condition. Paul is profoundly thoughtful and incredibly inventive – by his own account of what invention is all about. I interviewed Paul a couple of weeks ago. Below is a condensed and edited transcript of the interview.
