S. T. Joshi

Sunand Tryambak Joshi is an Indian-American literary critic, biographer, and editor best known as the preeminent scholar of H. P. Lovecraft and the supernatural horror tradition, and as a vocal proponent of atheism and rationalism. Educated at Brown University, he has produced authoritative editions and biographies of Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, Lord Dunsany, and H. L. Mencken, while editing periodicals such as Lovecraft Studies and the Weird Fiction Review.

Alongside his literary work, Joshi has contributed to atheist publishing primarily as an anthologist and editor rather than as an original philosopher of religion. His edited volumes—Atheism: A Reader (2000), The Agnostic Reader (2007), and In Her Place: A Documentary History of Prejudice Against Women (2006)—assemble historical and contemporary critiques of religious belief. His own polemical work God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong (2003) targets popular apologists including C. S. Lewis, Reinhold Niebuhr, Stephen L. Carter, Jerry Falwell, Annie Dillard, Neale Donald Walsch, and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, arguing that their defenses of theism rest on rhetorical evasion rather than argument.

Joshi's atheist writings have been criticized by reviewers for their polemical tone and uneven engagement with academic philosophy of religion; defenders note his strength lies in literary and rhetorical critique rather than systematic philosophical analysis. He situates himself within a freethought lineage running through Mencken, Bierce, and Bertrand Russell.