Holly Ordway

Holly Ordway is the Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MA in English from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and serves as the Charles Williams Subject Editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies. She is the author of Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages, winner of the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies, and Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography. Based in the US, she travels regularly to lecture on Tolkien in the US, Canada, the UK, and, recently, France.

Selected Tolkien-related publications

Books:

(2023) Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography. Word on Fire Academic.

(2021) Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages. Word on Fire Academic.

Articles and chapters:

(2026) “What Did Tolkien Really Think About Narnia?” In Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal special issue, ed. Jason Lepojärvi and Bruce R. Johnson. 

(2025) “Tolkien in His Contemporary Context: Among the Oratorians and the Jesuits.” In Tolkien Among the Theologians, ed. Austin Freeman. Walking Tree Press.

(2023) “The Mystical Face of Fairy-stories: Tolkien and the Use of Allegory in Fantasy.” In Tolkien and the Relation Between Sub-creaton and Reality, Journal of Inklings Studies Special Issue 3, ed. Giuseppe Pezzini and Eden O’Brien.

(2018) “Medieval Arthurian Sources for the Inklings: An Overview.” In The Inklings and King Arthur: J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, and Owen Barfield on the Matter of Britain, ed. Sørina Higgins. Apocryphile Press.

(2016) “Stonecrop: Lewis Takes His Place in Poets’ Corner.” In C.S. Lewis at Poets’ Corner, ed. Michael Ward and Peter S. Williams. Wipf & Stock.

(2013) “Further Up and Further In: Representations of Heaven in Tolkien and Lewis.” Journal of Inklings Studies, Vol. 3 no. 1.

Reviews:

(2026) Review of The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination, Ben Reinhard. Journal of Inklings Studies, Vol. 16 issue 1.

(2024) Review of The Blackwell Companion to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Stuart Lee. Journal of Inklings Studies, Vol. 14 issue 1.

(2020) Review of Fantasies of Time and Death: Dunsany, Eddison, Tolkien, Anna Vaninskaya. Journal of Inklings Studies, Volume 10, issue 2.

(2014) Review of The Ideal of Kingship in the Writings of Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Scarf. Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal. Vol. 7.

(2012) Review of The Loss and the Silence: Aspects of Modernism in the Works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams, Margaret Hiley. Mythlore: The Journal of the Mythopoeic Society. Issue 119/120.

(2011) Review of Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion, Douglas Charles Kane. Mythprint, the bulletin of the Mythopoeic Society. Volume 48:11, no. 352.  

Website:
hollyordway.com