Sadie Woodley
American Catholic Author, Speaker, Arts and Culture Commentator, and founder of the Great Catholic Book Club.
"Every book is Catholic, because every honest search for truth is a search for the One who is Truth."
American Catholic Author, Speaker, Arts and Culture Commentator, and founder of the Great Catholic Book Club.
"Every book is Catholic, because every honest search for truth is a search for the One who is Truth."
Sadie Woodley is an American Catholic author, speaker, arts and culture commentator, and co-founder of the Great Catholic Book Club. She holds a JD and MBA from the University of Iowa and a Master's in Catholic Studies from Franciscan University of Steubenville, where she is currently completing an MA in Theological Sciences.
Her work finds God in unexpected places — in dinosaur thrillers, dystopian nightmares, spy novels, space operas, and the quiet devastation of an Austen drawing room. She writes full-time, bringing the rigor of her academic background and the warmth of a born storyteller to everything she produces.
Sadie and her husband, Tyler, are raising their four children in Iowa.
Great Catholic Book Club, Volume I
Eleven essays. Eleven books. One search for God.
The Protoevangelium Collection takes eleven beloved novels — from Douglas Adams to C.S. Lewis, from Jane Austen to Frank Herbert — and reads them through the Catholic intellectual tradition. Each essay offers original literary and theological analysis, connections to Sacred Scripture and the Catechism, and discussion questions designed to push past surface-level conversation into the stuff that actually matters.
These aren't "Catholic books." They're books about dinosaurs, astronauts, spy thrillers, dystopias, space battles, and a guy and a girl who can't figure out how to talk to each other at a party in eighteenth-century England. But every one of them is asking the same question you are.
This isn't theology from the top down. It's theology from the ground up — found in the novels and stories that millions of people already carry in their hearts.
Books covered
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Ender's Game, Watchmen, Pride and Prejudice, Brave New World, The Bourne Identity, Foundation, Dune, Jurassic Park, The Martian, The Great Divorce
The Great Catholic Book Club reads one book a month through the Catholic intellectual tradition. Each year follows a unifying theme with eleven books explored January through November.
The 2026 reading year is War is Heck — eleven books exploring conflict, conscience, and the moral weight of war through a Catholic lens.
Sadie publishes monthly essays, hosts podcast discussions with Tyler, and leads a growing community of readers who believe that the best way to understand the faith is to find it already at work in the stories we love.
Tyler and Sadie discuss each month's book on the Great Catholic Book Club podcast. Come for the literary analysis. Stay for a husband and wife with very strong opinions about whether Ender's Game was a good example of Just War doctrine.
Or listen on your podcast app:
Sadie is available for podcast interviews, speaking engagements, parish events, and collaborations related to Catholic literary analysis, the intersection of faith and culture, Catholic homeschool education, and the art of reading well.
Tyler and Sadie are also available as a husband-and-wife team for joint interviews and speaking — a convert couple who found the Church through the books they loved.
Get in Touch →