Walter Wangerin is a Christian Minister and prolific author of both books and magazine articles (in which he is often credited as Walter Wangerin Jr). He currently works as a professor at Valparaiso University, and has a column in The Lutheran (which is distributed monthly).
Walter was born on February 13, 1944 in Portland, OR. The eldest of seven children, he spent much of his childhood moving around to various cities in both the US and Canada. In 1962 he began his 14 years of post secondary education, starting at Concordia Junior College, he went through several colleges and seminaries before finally completing his education at Christ Seminary-Seminex in 1976. He completed his first novel (The Book of the Dun Cow) in 1978, although he had previously written a few children's books that had seen limited distribution.
Walter wrote many books over the next 20 years, many of them were aimed at children, and all of them were from his Christian perspective. He is a natural storyteller, and uses his talents to present the bible in a way that most people would find interesting (which is probably the why he has won over a dozen awards for his writing).
I was particularly impressed with The Book of God: The Bible as Novel (which is not to be confused with his earlier novel entitled The Book of God). In 850 pages, Walter retells almost the entire Bible in the form of a single long novel. He skips a few things, starting his book with the story of Abraham and ending a few months after the death of Jesus. This is not the entire bible (as Psalms and almost all of the New Testament is missing (save for the Gospels). It is however, very interesting, this book does not lose the reader. Anyone who has had trouble reading the bible, should try this book instead. Wangerin has filled in the details (and skipped the lists of chickens and troops), and in doing so he has made the Bible a story that can stand on it's own, even if read by someone with no religous beliefs.
Novelists who cover similar ground to Wangerin include David Clark, Ann Wroe, and Max Lucado. (Similar ground means Christian literature in general, and more specifically, novelizations of biblical events.) Wangerin differs from these authors a bit, mainly in the fact that many Christian novelists seem to prefer to draw on the well known story of Jesus for the bulk of their work. While Wangerin gives equal weight to both the Old and New Testament in his works.
I am going to list all of Walter Wangerins novels and children's books below. He has also written about a dozen other books on various Christian subjects (Devotionals and books on Theology for the most part).
Novels
Children's Books
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