Robert Hudson

In third grade Robert knew that books would be his life—reading them, writing them, and making them. He studied literature and languages, eventually earning a master’s degree in comparative literature. He has been a teacher, a bookstore clerk, a journal editor, a translator, a book designer, a proofreader, a small-press publisher, a writer, and he has certificates in bookbinding and hand printing. For thirty-four years he worked as an editor at Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, until his retirement in 2018. He is a founding member of the West Michigan Thomas Merton Society and serves on the board of the Calvin College Center for Faith and Writing and is a founder of the biennial Hudson-Townsend Publishing Institute at Calvin College.

He is the author of The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style, 4th Edition (2016)—a standard reference in Christian publishing. Thanks to Credo Communications, four of his books have been published since 2016: Four Birds of Noah: A Prayer Book from the Time of Shakespeare (Eerdmans 2017); a volume of poems titled Kiss the Earth When You Pray: The Father Zosima Poems (Apocryphile Press 2016); The Monk’s Record Player: Thomas Merton, Bob Dylan, and the Perilous Summer of 1966 (Eerdmans 2018); The Art of the Almost Said: A Christian Writer’s Guide to Writing Poetry (Bold Vision Books 2018); and The Poet and the Fly: Seven Writers on God’s Most Fathomless Mysteries (Broadleaf Books 2020). His articles and poetry have appeared in Christianity Today, The Other Side, The Mennonite, The Seneca Review, Mars Hill Review, and other magazines and journals. For four years he blogged for WorkingPOET.com and edited their online newsletter.

Bob and his wife, Shelley, play banjo and fiddle, respectively, in an old-time Southern string band called Gooder’n Grits. They play for barn dances and festivals throughout West Michigan. They also operate the Perkipery Press, a chapbook publisher. They have three daughters: Abbie, Molly, and Lili.

Most recent projects: Seeing Jesus: Visionary Encounters from the First Century to the Present (Broadleaf Books 2021)

Represented by Tim Beals