May Publishers Newsletter 2026
ida decesaris
Dear Friends,
“This is the story of America writ small—a nation founded by immigrants and its shifting, oft-contradictory attitudes toward them.” So writes Mary Fontana about her new book, Strangers in the Province of Joy: Practicing Radical Hospitality on the US-Mexico Border. The book tells the moving and inspiring story of El Paso’s Annunciation House and its 50-year history of serving as a waystation for migrants and refugees from Mexico and Central America. This ministry has put them directly into conflict with policies that regard those seeking sustenance and safety as criminal invaders. Fontana’s book exposes the forces driving global migration and challenges readers to “confront the borders in their own hearts.”
We’re happy to announce a new series, Turning to the Mystics, in which bestselling author James Finley delves into the heart of some of the great mystics of the Christian tradition—men and women who experienced their oneness with God, and who have shared their experience with other spiritual seekers., based on a popular podcast from the Center for Action and Contemplation, The first volume in this series is Thomas Merton. Finley, now famous as a psychotherapist and spiritual director, was in his early life a novice of Merton at the Abbey of Gethsemani, and this book draws on a lifetime of study and reflection.
Beverley Lanzetta also walks in the mystical, contemplative tradition. Her new book is Birthing a New Mysticism: A Contemplation in Ten Parts. The word birthing, she says, is significant: “It speaks to human participation in the advent of spiritual wisdom, emerging from the soul’s innate, co-creative participation with the Divine.” In her ten steps of spiritual practice, she invites us to “surrender to the great unfolding of truth and celebrate the birthing of a spiritual path as ancient and as ever new as life itself.”
Phyllis Zagano is widely regarded as one of the world’s authorities on the question of women and the diaconate. She was appointed by Pope Francis to serve on the first Pontifical Commission for the Study of the Diaconate of Women. Her new book, The Vatican and Women Deacons, offers a detailed account of the frustrating and circuitous course of this topic over the past sixty years, as successive church leaders have declined to pronounce either a definitive no or yes. And so, the door remains open. As the report of the Synod on Synodality, endorsed by Pope Francis, notes, “What comes from the Holy Spirit cannot be stopped.”
Finally, I am happy to note that Andrew Walls’s posthumous book, Christian Conversion and Mission: A Brief Cultural History, has been named by the International Bulletin of Mission Research as one of the top ten books published in 2025 on Mission, World Christianity, and Intercultural Theology.
Peace and good,
Robert Ellsberg
Publisher