Eve Tushnet

Eve Tushnet was born in 1978 and grew up in Washington, D.C. She was received into the Catholic Church at Yale University in 1998. Her hobbies include sin, confession, and ecstasy. Her writing can be found on her blog http://eve-tushnet.blogspot.com and http://evesjournalismandstuff.blogspot.com. She writes a lot about being gay and Catholic. Her patron saint is Elizabeth of Hungary. She has worked full-time for the National Catholic Register and the Manhattan Institute (one year each), and part-time for the Institute on Marriage and Public Policy, the Bible Literacy Project, and the National Organization for Marriage. She has written for publications including Commonweal, the New York Post, the Washington Blade, and the Weekly Standard. Mostly she writes the art reviews for publications people don't read for the art reviews.

recent articles

A Fantasy of Salvage

Zombie voodoo pirates. Time-traveling Mossad agents. Djinn in the Cold War. The dark fantasy novels of Catholic author Tim Powers can seem like pure high-concept, and his newest book—a sequel to The Stress of Her Regard, a.k.a. What If the Romantic Poets Were Sort of Vampires?–has the same instant audience appeal. Christina Rossetti fights vampires! … Read more

The Redeemed Surrealists

In Norse mythology, the earth was formed from the body of Ymir, the father of the frost giants. His blood became the ocean, and his skull the sky. It’s a grim vision of life, and yet a strikingly anthropomorphic one: The world is shaped like a man and the man is dead.

The New ‘Brighton Rock’: Bad Romance

Last year, as I walked out of the theater after a showing of the 1947 gangster flick Brighton Rock, one of the men behind me had a question for his companion. “There was a lot of,” and he tried to put it delicately, “Catholic stuff in that. I mean…is that normal?” Both the 1947 film … Read more

How to Convert

About a week ago, I was making the case for Catholicism to a college freshman when a friend of mine set a guy on fire. He didn’t mean to! But they were making a really potent alcoholic drink in a loving-cup, trying to float grain alcohol on top so they could flambé it. I’ve seen … Read more

Mary, in the Glass Coffin of the Museum

The Bible, decked with jewels and precious metals, was placed just above waist level — the perfect height for us to bow and kiss it. And that’s what would have happened in the Orthodox church for which the holy book was created. But if we’d tried that here, our lips would have bumped into a … Read more

The Great Unweaving

I’m sitting outside a downtown Starbucks with two George Washington University undergraduates, talking about sex, politics, and religion. Michele Walk and Conor Joseph Rogers fit my stereotype of contemporary American college students. They’re sincere, confident, and hyperaware of the ways in which they’re different from their parents. Michele and Conor also represent a growing demographic: … Read more

The Survivor’s-Guilt Guide to College

Survival is the least of my desires. –Dorothy Allison It’s that time of year again: Sultry heat punctuated by thunderstorms, back-to-school charity drives at church . . . and the publication of endless “college survival guides” for incoming freshmen. At first glance, this clichéd phrase might seem a bit overstated. College isn’t exactly the ascent … Read more

A Great Reckoning in a Little Room

There’s an objection that Protestants sometimes pose to Catholics: Why should I confess my sins to a man, when I could simply confess alone, in my room, to God?   I’m sure there are all kinds of theological answers to this question. But I want to talk about what the presence of the “other person,” … Read more

Cradle Will Rock

A college friend of mine once jokingly explained that Catholics propagate our faith a little differently from, say, the Jehovah’s Witnesses: “We don’t have to proselytize — we just knock boots!”   Of course, looking at things seriously, the first part isn’t true. Catholics have to do the hard work of evangelization. And unfortunately, the … Read more

Zounds! Five Reflections on the Wounds of Christ

A red array of metaphors can be read in the wounds Christ received on the cross. The wounds can stand for our suffering and its sources, for our sins, for our vulnerabilities. They can be the cruel divisions torn in the Body of Christ, the Church, by heresy and history. Here are five small thoughts … Read more

Tolstoy Dies, Goes to America

All utopias are alike; but every utopian is unhappy in his own way.   A new movie, Michael Hoffman’s The Last Station, attempts to portray the last days of Leo Tolstoy, when the great writer had turned from delving into the complexities of individuals’ loves and sorrows to the more streamlined task of issuing treatises … Read more

Six Imperfect Metaphors for Conversion

A friend’s therapist once suggested that she consider becoming Episcopalian. Wouldn’t that be so much easier than wrestling with all her Catholic angst?   This suggestion made me think about the many misconceptions and stereotypes surrounding religious faith — and, maybe especially, religious conversion. No metaphor can really capture the wild variety of conversion experiences … Read more

Live Through This

My best friend still makes fun of me for something I said on a liquor-tilting night last century. Fired by some undergraduate combination of sudden conversion and Southern Comfort, I misexplained to her, “It’s just that my worldview is so unified!”   This is one temptation of a certain kind of bookish Catholic. (Cradle Catholics … Read more

Heaven Can Wait

There’s a terrific moment in the TV show House, in which the irascible and brilliant Dr. Greg House is explaining to a lapsed Catholic subordinate why he doesn’t believe in the afterlife. House, with all the self-lacerating irony that actor Hugh Laurie can impart to the character, says, “I would hate to think that all … Read more

Romoeroticism

This year, just like last year, Gay Pride weekend coincided with the feast of Corpus Christi. Washington, D.C.’s Pride parade was fairly restrained: It featured a cornucopia of Episcopalians, and all the marchers went out of their way to sweetly drape beads over the little elementary-school girls standing in front of me. There were Affirming … Read more

We’ll Burn That Bra When We Come to It

The most startling thing about Florence King’s 1982 novel When Sisterhood Was in Flower might be how thoroughly it combines satire and fondness. Gentleness isn’t a characteristic often associated with satire; and it certainly isn’t often associated with Miss King, the acerbic virago of National Review. King on Sylvia Plath: “For all her insecurities, Plath was … Read more

Sublimity Now!

On New Year’s Eve, my best friend and I went to a bonfire. We’ve done this for the past couple of years: You’re supposed to throw a note or representation of some unwanted aspect of the old year into the flames. But this year the wind was up, and the bonfire roared, sweeping toward delightedly … Read more

Outside Narnia: Children’s Fantasy and Christianity

A witch helped me become a Christian. OK, the biographical blurbs on Tamora Pierce’s book jackets don’t actually call her a witch, but they do say that she’s taught witchcraft; close enough. Pierce is the author of several children’s fantasy series, of which the most famous is probably the Alanna series: Alanna: The First Adventure, … Read more

Defining the Relationship

For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him, Fought him, starved with him. For twenty-five years my bed is his — If that’s not love, what is? — Fiddler on the Roof “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?” This is the question we fear on airplanes, the question we recoil from in doorbell encounters. … Read more

The Serenity Player

I spent Halloween of 1998 at a pumpkin-carving party in a dorm room high in a Yale tower. We were having a great time in our collegiate world, teasing each other about newfound philosophical convictions and relating our best weird-professor stories, when someone glanced out the window and exclaimed, “Trick-or-treaters!” Instantly the whole room crowded … Read more

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