Wood, who recently published a book titled The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-Earth, is especially interested in the intersection between religion, literature, and culture. Wood holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from East Texas State University and master’s and doctorate degrees in religion from the University of Chicago. He taught at Wake Forest and Samford universities before joining the Baylor faculty in 1998. In addition to his latest book, Wood also published The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, John Updike, and Peter De Vries). He is editor-at-large for the Christian Century and serves as a member of the editorial board for the Flannery O’Connor Bulletin. He is also the book review editor for Perspectives in Religious Studies, the journal published by the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion.