Literature
"Beauty will save the world." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
Literature – beautiful writing – depends not just on plot and structure and not just on the author’s mastery of technique, though these are certainly important. Instead, the beauty of the written word springs from the author’s ability to communicate Truth in a way that clings to the reader’s perception.
Richard Rohlin
Presentation: The Corners of the World: Writing Fiction as an Orthodox Christian
Richard W. Rohlin is a software developer, Germanic philologist, and Orthodox Christian living in Texas with his wife and children. His published works on Germanic poetry, the Inklings, and the Sacramental Imagination include The Digital Hervararkviða and a chapter in the recent anthology Amid Weeping There is Joy: Orthodox Perspectives on Tolkien’s Fantastic Realm. He is the co-host of the Amon Sul Podcast from Ancient Faith Radio, which examines the works of J.R.R. Tolkien from an Orthodox Christian perspective. He is also a regular contributor to The Symbolic World YouTube channel and blog, where he discusses and writes about medieval universal history and hagiography.
Richard’s latest project, Finding the Golden Key: Essays Towards a Recovery of the Sacramental Imagination, is being published in collaboration with Eighth Day Press.
Joshua Sturgill
"Poetic Catechism – Becoming Orthodox Slowly and Completely"
Joshua Sturgill is an eclectic writer who melds his interests in gardening, astronomy, philosophy, and music with his calling to study and create works of literature. He has published three collections of poetry, along with essays on diverse subjects and various pieces of short fiction. Since 2002, he has collaborated with Eighth Day Books in Wichita, Kansas, promoting Orthodox Christian culture through community, education, and good reading. Joshua is a Saint John's College, Santa Fe graduate with a degree in Far Eastern philosophy. His graduate coursework (M.A. and M.Div.) and ongoing independent studies have led him to conclude that immersion in poetry and a growing understanding of ancient Christian cosmology are bringing a renewal of interest in Orthodox Christianity to the contemporary West.
Justin Marler
Justin is an American musician. He is known for being a founding member of the stoner rock band Sleep and for leaving a burgeoning career in music to become a monk in an Eastern Orthodox monastery.
In 1990, Marler joined the members of a little-known band called Asbestosdeath (with Al Cisneros, Chris Hakius, and Matt Pike), which the members later renamed Sleep. Soon after recording Sleep's first full-length record, Volume One, Marler vanished, while the band went on to become metal icons.
Marler turned up at Saint Herman of Alaska Monastery in northern California and was later transferred to a monastery on a nearly deserted island in Alaska. During his seven-year stint as a monk, he founded the widely distributed zine titled Death to the World. The zine had a considerable impact on youth counterculture during the mid-to late-1990s, which caught the attention of the mainstream press and quickly led to the release of Marler's first book, Youth of the Apocalypse, which he co-authored with a fellow monastic.
In 1999, Marler left his reclusive life in the monastery and returned to California, where he restarted his music career with former Sleep bandmate Chris Hakius as the lead singer for an alternative band called The Sabians. Marler then moved to Austin, Texas, in 2005, where he remained a musician and publishing author, active in the Austin music scene with his current band, Shiny Empire. In 2015, Marler started a Christian punk band called Quick And The Dead. On 25th November 2015, the band released its first album, Hymns for the Apocalypse. Album sales went to Christian communities of Syria aggravated by IS persecution—new books in 2025: The Art of Unseen Warfare and New Edition of Youth of the Apocalypse.
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