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Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies

Canada

United States

General

Blog

Introduction

The Mennonite/s Writing bibliographies attempt to be a comprehensive list of all of the literary writing done by Mennonite writers in North America in English. The term “Mennonite/s Writing” was coined for the first Mennonite/s Writing conference, which was held at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, from 10-12 May 1990, and the concurrent “Mennonite/s Writing in Canada” special issue of The New Quarterly (10.1-2, Spring/Summer 1990), which was edited by Hildi Froese Tiessen.

There are three bibliographies: one for work by writers from Canada, one for work by writers from the United States, and one for general literary criticism and theory about the field.

The bibliographies includes work by Mennonite writers, that is, writers who are ethnic or theological Mennonites (or both), whether they claim the identity “Mennonite” for themselves or not, and whether or not their work contains explicitly Mennonite characters or themes. Creative works are listed in chronological order under their author and critical/theoretical works (some of which are by non-Mennonites) are listed alphabetically by title under the writer they discuss. With a few exceptions, the bibliographies do not include self-published books, texts published solely as ebooks, book reviews, children’s books, or individual poems or stories published in periodicals or miscellaneous collections. However, see “Specialized Bibliographies” below. The citation style is a hybrid between the MLA Handbook, 7th edition, and the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition.

The Canadian bibliography grew from a nucleus assembled by Hildi Froese Tiessen, Professor of English Emerita at Conrad Grebel University College, in 1997, funded by the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada. It was maintained from 1997-2018 by Ervin Beck, Professor of English Emeritus at Goshen College.

The U.S. bibliography was originally prepared for the “Mennonite/s Writing in the U.S.” conference, which was sponsored by the English Department of Goshen College and held there from 23-26 October 1997. It was created and maintained from 1997-2018 by Ervin Beck. Linda Kimpel, Linda Rouch, Ann Hostetler, and others at Goshen College provided technical assistance. Both bibliographies have been maintained since August 2018 by Beck’s former student Daniel Shank Cruz.

The general bibliography includes critical and theoretical work about Mennonite literature that does not examine individual authors, but discusses the field as a whole or examines multiple authors together. It was created as a separate entity in August 2018 by Daniel Shank Cruz from sections formerly housed in the Mennonite/s Writing in Canada and Mennonite/s Writing in the U.S. bibliographies.

The blog lists updates to the bibliographies when they are made.

Robert Zacharias offers a fascinating discussion of the bibliographies in Reading Mennonite Writing: A Study in Minor Transnationalism (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), 44-53.

To suggest corrections or additions to the bibliographies, please contact Daniel Shank Cruz at DANIEL.CRUZ30 [at] myhunter.cuny.edu.

List of Journal Abbreviations and Websites

CGR = Conrad Grebel Review, https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/publications/conrad-grebel-review.

JMW = Journal of Mennonite Writing; (JCMW = Journal of the Center for Mennonite Writing until 2017), https://mennonitewriting.org/journal/.

JMS = Journal of Mennonite Studies, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/issue/archive.

ML = Mennonite Life, https://ml.bethelks.edu/. Note that this website is currently under maintenance, so some individual links to articles in the bibliographies may not work. However, readers can access individual articles from the Mennonite Life homepage.

MQR = Mennonite Quarterly Review, https://www.goshen.edu/mqr/.

Mennonot, a magazine “for Mennos on the margins” (1993-2003).

Rhubarb, the journal of the Mennonite Literary Society (1998-2017).

Christian Living (1954-early 2000s), Mennonite Mirror (1971-1991, archived here: https://cmbs.mennonitebrethren.ca/publications/mennonite-mirror/), Festival Quarterly (1974-1996), and DreamSeeker Magazine (2001-2012, archived here: https://www.cascadiapublishinghouse.com/dsm/backissues.htm) also included much Mennonite literary work.

Specialized Bibliographies

For a bibliography of published work from the first seven Mennonite/s Writing conferences (1990, 1997, 2002, 2006, 2009, 2012, 2015), see Daniel Shank Cruz, “A Bibliography and Subject Index of Published Work from the Mennonite/s Writing Conferences.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 91.1 (2017): 93-130.

For a bibliography of Mennonite and Amish serial fiction, most of which books are Amish-themed romances, or “bonnet” novels, see Ervin Beck, http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/2/4/mennonite-and-amish-serial-fiction/.

For a list of novels-in-stories by Mennonite writers, see Ervin Beck, http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/4/2/mennonite-novel-stories-survey/.

For a bibliography of queer Mennonite literature up through 2018 see Daniel Shank Cruz, https://mennonitewriting.org/journal/10/3/brief-history-and-bibliography-queer-mennonite-lit/#all.

For a bibliography of the life and writings of German Mennonite dramatist Hermann Sudermann, see Lauren Friesen, http://www.mennonitewriting.org/journal/3/4/sudermann-bibliography/.
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