He won the National Book Award for sci-fi for "The Book of the Dun Cow" (2003).

About that book:

"Walter Wangerin’s profound fantasy concerns a time when the sun turned around the earth and the animals could speak, when Chauntecleer the Rooster ruled over a more or less peaceful kingdom. What the animals did not know was that they were the Keepers of Wyrm, monster of evil long imprisoned beneath the earth … and Wyrm, sub terra, was breaking free."

From "Contemporary Authors":

....Wangerin has also written stories for younger readers. Thistle is the tale of a farm family who, one by one, are swallowed up by an enormous Pudge (who resembles a huge potato). Only Thistle, the youngest and smallest child, is brave enough to kiss an ugly witch in order to save her family from the monstrous vegetable. While Washington Post Book World reviewer Michael Patrick Hearn believed that "too many questions are left unanswered by the text" and that Wangerin "has not thought his fable through," in the New York Times Book Review, Sally Holmes found the prose "lively and funny . . . its flamboyance matches the absurdity of an anthropomorphic potato." In Elisabeth and the Water-Troll, Wangerin uses the tale of an ugly but sympathetic troll, a needy orphan, and a village of cruel bigots to explore the true sources of beauty in the world. "The emotions of the story are rooted in the world we inhabit today," declared Malcolm Bosse in the New York Times Book Review. Bosse further praised the book as "a fairy tale that tells all of us, adult and child, something we need to be reminded of continually: that what seems and what is are not always the same."...

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-wangerin-vu-obit-st-0829-20210826-bpfyksmknje53isbi52nphzfr4-story.html

VU author and noted faculty member Walt Wangerin dead at 77
By Philip Potempa
Published: Aug 26, 2021 at 1:06 pm

Described as both beloved and outspoken for his theological field, the Rev. Walt Wangerin Jr. did not mind his work and professional speaker persona were a catalyst for others to discuss, counter and debate, a result from his writing and lectures.

During his three-decade association with Valparaiso University, in addition to teaching theology and traveling the national lecture circuit, Wangerin wrote and published more than 40 books. His written works earned page-by-page accolades for both fiction and nonfiction writings, such as his children’s book “The Book of the Dun Cow” (Harper & Row, 1978), the latter which was named The New York Times’ Best Children’s Book of the Year and received The National Book Award in 1980.

Wangerin, 77, died Aug. 5 surrounded by his family.

His 208-page hardcover “Letters from the Land of Cancer” (Zondervan Press 2010) detailed his journey following a diagnosis of inoperable cancer and shared his challenges of dealing with his own mortality balance by his faith.

“Shortly after the cancer had been diagnosed, I began writing letters to the members of my immediate family, to relatives and to lifelong friends,” Wangerin explained in the book’s first pages.

“The following book consists mostly of those letters. They invite you into my most intimate dancing with the cancer, even as that partner and I have over the last two years swung each other around the tiled floors of ballrooms and bathrooms. Dizzy still, and day by day, I sat and wrote: This is what I’m feeling right now. This is what I think.”

The book received the Award of Merit in 2011.

“Walt was a remarkably gifted person in pretty much every way that involved words,” said his longtime faculty office neighbor and collegiate colleague Fred Niedner.

“He was a master storyteller and had a national and international reputation as both a writer and a preacher. His preaching style was most always storytelling and he wrote books on many subjects, quite a few fictional, but also many that used his own experiences as ways to talk about theology and facing life’s challenges. He was a popular teacher of writing, literature, theology, storytelling and preaching.”

Niedner, who taught at VU from 1973 to 2014 and now serves as a senior research professor in theology, said despite Wangerin defying odds and living with his cancer for 15 years after diagnosis, his death “still came as a surprise.”

While a high schooler, Wally, as his family and classmates called him, entered a pre-seminary school but when it came time for seminary, he parted ways, did graduate study in literature at Miami University in Ohio, and then began teaching at the University of Evansville in Indiana.

He returned to seminary and completed his studies to serve time as a pastor prior to arriving in Valparaiso in 1991. With his family’s blessings, they made their move and he joined the VU campus to accept appointment as writer in residence and occupant of the Emil and Elfriede Jochum Chair in “the study of Christian values in public and professional life” as well as teaching literature, creative writing, and theology until his retirement in 2012.

In 2000, he published a 445-page hardcover book, bound and weighing nearly two pounds, titled “Paul: A Novel” (Zondervan Press), the culmination of five years of writing and research and raising eyebrows and questions, along with brisk book sales, for Wangerin’s candid approach examining the life and experiences of the saint.

“I wanted to write about Paul because he’s one of those figures who has not only been controversial, but also responsible for so much change,” Wangerin said in a September 2000 interview.

“What I find so truly amazing is that he was able to create this change by using only the power of his voice and words. Most people from history who are credited with creating change among the people, had to do it with the force of an army.”

(snip)

https://walterwangerinjr.org/new_web/biography.php

https://walterwangerinjr.org/works/
(book covers and descriptions)

https://store.rabbitroom.com/collections/walter-wangerin-collection
(more covers)

https://walterwangerinjr.org/kids/
(his kids' books)

https://www.christianity.com/wiki/people/who-was-walter-wangerin-jr.html
(this includes "10 Important Events in the Life of Walter Wangerin Jr.")

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2978119.Walter_Wangerin_Jr_

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/authorpage/walter-wangerin,-jr..html
(PW book reviews)

https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/author-walter-wangerin-s-many-lives-and-words
(long tribute)

"Author Walter Wangerin’s many lives and words"

"Those of us who worked with him sometimes suspected he had cloned himself."

by Frederick Niedner in the September 8, 2021 issue

"Despite his cohabitation with cancer for 15 years, Walter Wangerin’s death on August 5 came as a surprise. To friends he seemed to have lived multiple lives—some public, others more private. He, and we, expected more.

"Wally, as family and schoolmates called him, grew up in Lutheran parsonages and parochial schools. Biblical characters and ecclesiastical officials populated his world along with the Dakotans, Oregonians, and Albertans in his father’s parishes. In novels and poems, however, Wally discovered other worlds, and concomitantly a yearning to become a storyteller and writer himself..."

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2021/august-web-only/walter-wangerin-jr-philip-yancey-tribute-storyteller.html
(another VERY long tribute, by author Philip Yancey)

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.obituaries/c/o_6en0YoBos/m/mS35IxMO2zsJ

Quote:

....Lutheran novelist Walter Wangerin, who faces the cancerous rebellion
of his own cells, complains that obituary writers declare "that
so-and-so died 'after a long battle with cancer.' … Are folks with
cancer good fighters if they win? Bad fighters, failing knights, if
they lose?"

"Why not use the imagery that acknowledges how one experiences dying?"
Wangerin writes. "How one behaves in the face of death [and] what one
has to offer those who stand by in love and relationship?"...

WRITINGS:

The Book of the Dun Cow (young adult fantasy), Harper (New York City), 1978.

Ragman and Other Cries of Faith (twenty-six stories and essays, some previously published), Harper, 1984, reprinted, 1994.
The Book of Sorrows (young adult fantasy; sequel to The Book of the Dun Cow), Harper, 1985, reprinted, Zondervan (Grand Rapids, MI), 1996.
The Orphean Passages: The Drama of Faith (adult), Harper, 1986.
A Miniature Cathedral and Other Poems, Harper, 1986.
As for Me and My House: Crafting Your Marriage to Last (nonfiction), Nelson (New York City), 1987.
Miz Lil and the Chronicles of Grace, Harper, 1988.
The Manger Is Empty, Harper, 1989.

Mourning into Dancing, Zondervan, 1992.
Reliving the Passion: Meditations on the Suffering, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus as Recorded in Mark, Zondervan, 1992.
Little Lamb, Who Made Thee?: A Book about Children and Parents, Zondervan, 1993.
Measuring the Days: Daily Reflections with Walter Wangerin, Jr., Harper (San Francisco, CA), 1993.
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel (also see below), Zondervan, 1996..
The Book of Genesis: A Selection from the Best-Selling "The Book of God," Zondervan, 1997.
(Editor) God's Story Is My Story: Essays on Hearing and Telling the Word, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (Chicago, IL), 1997.
Whole Prayer: Speaking and Listening to God, Zondervan, 1998.
Preparing for Jesus: Meditations on the Coming of Advent, Christmas, and the Kingdom, Zondervan, 1999.

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