Cait West
Cait West is a writer and editor based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her work has been published in The Revealer, Religion Dispatches, Fourth Genre, and Hawai`i Pacific Review, among others. As an advocate and a survivor of the Christian patriarchy movement, she serves on the editorial board for Tears of Eden, a nonprofit providing resources for survivors of spiritual abuse, and cohosts the podcast Survivors Discuss.
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Tia Levings
Tia Levings is the New York Times Bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife, her memoir of escape from Christian Patriarchy. She writes about the realities of religious trauma and the Trad wife life, decoding the fundamentalist influences in our news and culture. Her work and quotes have appeared in Teen Vogue, Salon, the Huffington Post, and Newsweek. She also appeared in the hit Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People. Based in North Carolina, she is mom to four incredible adults and likes to travel, hike, paint, and daydream. Find her on social media @TiaLevingsWriter and TiaLevings.Substack.com. Her second book releases with St. Martin’s Essentials May 5, 2026.
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Camden Morgante
Dr. Camden Morgante is a licensed clinical psychologist who owns a private therapy practice. She is a writer, speaker, and coach on purity culture recovery and faith reconstruction. Dr. Camden combines her personal experience growing up in purity culture with her professional experience in mind-body integration to help her clients and readers heal their faith from toxic beliefs. Dr. Camden lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with her husband and their daughter and son.
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Matthew D. Taylor
Matthew D. Taylor is a religious studies scholar and expert in independent charismatic Christianity and Christian nationalism. He is the creator, writer, and narrator of the Charismatic Revival Fury audio-documentary series on the Straight White American Jesus podcast and author of Scripture People. Taylor holds a PhD in religious studies and Muslim-Christian relations from Georgetown University and an MA in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. He has served on the faculty of Georgetown University and of George Washington University, and is currently a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore.
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Jessica Willis Fisher
Jessica Willis Fisher is a singer/songwriter, performing artist, and author who believes that sharing our stories with one another will change the world. Growing up the eldest daughter in a toxic and abusive household, she performed with her family band The Willis Clan until her departure in 2016 at the age of 23. Her first book, Unspeakable, narrates her harrowing struggle to both articulate her childhood experiences and find her true voice on the other side of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. A passionate advocate for survivors, Jessica lives in Nashville, TN with her husband, Sean Fisher.
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Nancy French
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Nancy French has collaborated on multiple books for celebrities - five of which made the New York Times best seller list - and written books under her own name. She has conducted a multi-year journalistic investigation, written commentary, and published for the nation’s most prominent newspapers and magazines. Her own memoir, GHOSTED, hits bookshelves in the spring of 2024.
She lives in Franklin, Tennessee with her husband – journalist David French – and family. -
Jamie Lee Finch
As a survivor of both childhood trauma and religious trauma, I have a deep familiarity with the language used by those who come from authoritarian backgrounds and desire to return to a feeling of wholeness within their bodies — after years of assimilating to a belief that required them to separate from themselves.
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I specialize in reframing the reality of embodiment through that language of relationship, and I work with individuals of all genders who consistently find within themselves an inability to connect with, communicate with, and successfully relate to their own bodies — physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. -
Linda A. Curtis
Linda Curtis is an executive consultant, speaker, and mindfulness teacher who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2003 she has consulted with hundreds of successful entrepreneurs, leaders, C-suite executives, and their teams. Her client list includes MasterCard, RSF Social Finance, NASDAQ, and KPMG. She serves on the core faculty of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI.org), the groundbreaking mindfulness and emotional intelligence program developed at Google. She teaches their Search Inside Yourself course around the world at organizations including Google, Red Bull, L’Oreal, Vanderbilt University, Genentech, and LinkedIn.
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Amber Cantorna-Wylde
Amber Cantorna-Wylde (she/her) is a national speaker, community healer, and the author of three books. Her newest book, Out of Focus: My Story of Sexuality, Shame, and Toxic Evangelicalism releases Oct. 2023. As a gay woman living with the invisible disability of both Lyme disease and rheumatoid arthritis, Amber specializes in bringing messages of diversity, hope, and self-acceptance to those who have been pushed to the margins. She is the host of the Unashamed Love Collective – a safe haven for LGBTQ+ people and allies that fosters supportive community. She also leads Cultivating Community Retreats—small, intimate group gatherings that build lasting relationships with like-minded people.
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J.S. Park
J.S. Park is a hospital chaplain, former atheist/agnostic, sixth degree black belt, suicide survivor, Korean-American, and follows Christ.
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J.S. currently serves at a 1000+ bed hospital, one of the top-ranked in the nation, and was also a chaplain for three years at one of the largest nonprofit charities for the homeless on the east coast.
J.S. has a B.A. in Psychology from the University of South Florida and a M.Div from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Some duties of a hospital chaplain include grief counseling, attending every death and Code Blue, help with end-of-life decision-making, notifying family members of loved ones in the ER, and advocating for patients and families in crisis.
J.S. is author of an upcoming book, As Long As -
Jeff Chu
Jeff Chu is an award-winning journalist, essayist, preacher, and speaker.
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He serves as an editor-at-large at Travel+Leisure magazine, teacher in residence at Crosspointe Church in Cary, N.C., and parish associate for storytelling and witness at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, Calif. Formerly a writer at Time and an editor at Fast Company, his work has also appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and in numerous other outlets.
Jeff is an ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America. For several years, he served as co-curator of Evolving Faith.
He lives in Grand Rapids, Mich., with his husband, Tristan. -
Laura E. Anderson
Laura E. Anderson (PhD, Saybrook University; LMFT) is a trauma-informed psychotherapist, founder of the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, and cofounder of the Religious Trauma Institute. Her dissertation focused on healing after sexualized violence and trauma in connection with purity culture. Anderson has spoken on Christian and post-Christian podcasts and online platforms and has written for Religion News Service and The New Republic. She is actively engaged on Instagram and other social media platforms and lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Beth Allison Barr
Beth Allison Barr is Assistant Professor of European Women's History, Baylor University. Her research interests focus on sermon literature in England, 1350-1750, and she is the author of The Pastoral Care of Women in Late Medieval England. She lives in Waco, Texas.
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Barbara Demick
Barbara Demick is an American journalist. She is the author of Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood (Andrews & McMeel, 1996). Her next book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, was published by Spiegel & Grau/Random House in December 2009 and Granta Books in 2010.
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Demick was correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer in Eastern Europe from 1993 to 1997. Along with photographer John Costello, she produced a series of articles that ran 1994-1996 following life on one Sarajevo street over the course of the war in Bosnia. The series won the George Polk Award for international reporting, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for international reporting and was a finalist for the Pulitzer in the features categor -
Eliza Griswold
Eliza Griswold is an American journalist and poet. She was a fellow at the New America Foundation from 2008 to 2010 and won a 2010 Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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Katherine Stewart
Katherine Stewart is an American journalist and author who often writes about issues related to the separation of church and state, the rise of religious nationalism, and global movements against liberal democracy.
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Sydney Taylor
Taylor was born on October 31, 1904 on New York City's Lower East Side. Her Jewish immigrant family lived in poverty conditions, but they felt great respect and appreciation for the country that gave them hope and opportunities for the future. This childhood led Taylor eventually into writing.
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Taylor started working as a secretary after she graduated from high school, married her husband, and spent her nights with the Lenox Hill Players, a theater group. As an actress, she also learned modern dance, which she thoroughly enjoyed. After dancing with the Martha Graham Dance Company, Taylor took time off to have her one and only child, a daughter. As her daughter grew up Taylor would tell her stories about her own childhood. Because of her daug -
Tia Levings
Tia Levings is the New York Times Bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife, her memoir of escape from Christian Patriarchy. She writes about the realities of religious trauma and the Trad wife life, decoding the fundamentalist influences in our news and culture. Her work and quotes have appeared in Teen Vogue, Salon, the Huffington Post, and Newsweek. She also appeared in the hit Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People. Based in North Carolina, she is mom to four incredible adults and likes to travel, hike, paint, and daydream. Find her on social media @TiaLevingsWriter and TiaLevings.Substack.com. Her second book releases with St. Martin’s Essentials May 5, 2026.
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Nancy French
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Nancy French has collaborated on multiple books for celebrities - five of which made the New York Times best seller list - and written books under her own name. She has conducted a multi-year journalistic investigation, written commentary, and published for the nation’s most prominent newspapers and magazines. Her own memoir, GHOSTED, hits bookshelves in the spring of 2024.
She lives in Franklin, Tennessee with her husband – journalist David French – and family. -
Amanda Held Opelt
Amanda Held Opelt is a songwriter, speaker, and author of the books A Hole in the World and Holy Unhappiness. She writes about faith, grief, and creativity, and believes in the power of community, ritual, shared worship, and storytelling to heal even our deepest wounds. Amanda has spent 15 years serving in the non-profit and humanitarian aid sectors. She lives in the mountains of Boone, North Carolina, with her husband and two young daughters.
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Claude M. Steele
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Claude M. Steele is a former professor at Stanford University who is now executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California, Berkeley.
The above is from the website of Smith College, where Steele's Book Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues To How Stereotypes Affect Us has been chosen for the 2014 Summer Read Program for first year students. -
Randall Balmer
Randall Herbert Balmer, Ph.D. (Princeton University, 1985), is an ordained Episcopal Priest and historian of American religion, and holds the John Phillips Chair in Religion at Dartmouth College. He also has taught at Barnard College; Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, Drew, Emory, Yale and Northwestern universities; and at Union Theological Seminary. Balmer was nominated for an Emmy Award for the PBS documentary "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory," based on his book of the same title.
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Jessica Willis Fisher
Jessica Willis Fisher is a singer/songwriter, performing artist, and author who believes that sharing our stories with one another will change the world. Growing up the eldest daughter in a toxic and abusive household, she performed with her family band The Willis Clan until her departure in 2016 at the age of 23. Her first book, Unspeakable, narrates her harrowing struggle to both articulate her childhood experiences and find her true voice on the other side of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. A passionate advocate for survivors, Jessica lives in Nashville, TN with her husband, Sean Fisher.
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Amber Scorah
Amber Scorah is a writer living in Brooklyn, NY. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, Gothamist, and Believer magazine.
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Amber became a parental leave advocate after the loss of her son Karl on his first day in childcare, and was named one of the 100 most influential people in Brooklyn culture by Brooklyn Magazine.
Before coming to New York City, Amber lived in Shanghai, where she was creator and host of the podcast "Dear Amber--The Insider's Guide to Everything China," one of iTunes' Top 10 Podcasts of 2008. Amber is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. -
Linda A. Curtis
Linda Curtis is an executive consultant, speaker, and mindfulness teacher who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2003 she has consulted with hundreds of successful entrepreneurs, leaders, C-suite executives, and their teams. Her client list includes MasterCard, RSF Social Finance, NASDAQ, and KPMG. She serves on the core faculty of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI.org), the groundbreaking mindfulness and emotional intelligence program developed at Google. She teaches their Search Inside Yourself course around the world at organizations including Google, Red Bull, L’Oreal, Vanderbilt University, Genentech, and LinkedIn.
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Jocelyn R. Zichterman
Jocelyn Zichterman is an abuse advocate and whistleblower fighting against the IFB Church. She is the author of the book I Fired God: My Life Inside---and Escape From---the Secret World of the Independent Fundamental Baptist Cult. Zichterman was a critical source and interview for the ABC News 20/20 investigative hour Shattered Faith as well as the "Ungodly Discipline" series featured on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360. She has also been a source for The New York Times and The Huffington Post, among many other publications. Jocelyn lives in Oregon with her husband and eight children.
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Lois Duncan
Lois Duncan (born Lois Duncan Steinmetz) was an American writer and novelist, known primarily for her books for children and young adults, in particular (and some times controversially considering her young readership) crime thrillers. Duncan's parents were the noted magazine photographers Lois Steinmetz and Joseph Janney Steinmetz. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Sarasota, Florida. Duncan started writing and submitting manuscripts to magazines at the age of ten, and when she was thirteen succeeded in selling her first story.
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Duncan attended Duke University from 1952 to 1953 but dropped out, married, and started a family. During this time, she continued to write and publish magazine articles; over the course of her -
Lyz Lenz
Lyz Lenz is a journalist and the author of God Land and Belabored. She has written for Insider, The New York Times, Marie Claire, and The Washington Post. Lenz also writes the newsletter Men Yell at Me, about the intersection of politics and personhood in red-state America. She lives in Iowa with her two kids.
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Aimee Byrd
Aimee Byrd is just an ordinary mom of three who has also been a martial arts student, coffee shop owner, and Bible study teacher. Author of Housewife Theologian, she now blogs about theology and the Christian life and cohosts The Mortification of Spin podcast.
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Laura E. Anderson
Laura E. Anderson (PhD, Saybrook University; LMFT) is a trauma-informed psychotherapist, founder of the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, and cofounder of the Religious Trauma Institute. Her dissertation focused on healing after sexualized violence and trauma in connection with purity culture. Anderson has spoken on Christian and post-Christian podcasts and online platforms and has written for Religion News Service and The New Republic. She is actively engaged on Instagram and other social media platforms and lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
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Jamie Lee Finch
As a survivor of both childhood trauma and religious trauma, I have a deep familiarity with the language used by those who come from authoritarian backgrounds and desire to return to a feeling of wholeness within their bodies — after years of assimilating to a belief that required them to separate from themselves.
Buy books on Amazon
I specialize in reframing the reality of embodiment through that language of relationship, and I work with individuals of all genders who consistently find within themselves an inability to connect with, communicate with, and successfully relate to their own bodies — physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. -
Amber Cantorna-Wylde
Amber Cantorna-Wylde (she/her) is a national speaker, community healer, and the author of three books. Her newest book, Out of Focus: My Story of Sexuality, Shame, and Toxic Evangelicalism releases Oct. 2023. As a gay woman living with the invisible disability of both Lyme disease and rheumatoid arthritis, Amber specializes in bringing messages of diversity, hope, and self-acceptance to those who have been pushed to the margins. She is the host of the Unashamed Love Collective – a safe haven for LGBTQ+ people and allies that fosters supportive community. She also leads Cultivating Community Retreats—small, intimate group gatherings that build lasting relationships with like-minded people.
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To partner with Amber in the continuation of her wor -
Elizabeth Esther
Elizabeth Esther is the author of "Girl at The End of the World: my escape from fundamentalism in search of faith with a future." A longtime, award-winning blogger, Elizabeth's other articles have appeared in TIME, Christianity Today, Religion News Service, Mothering Magazine, OC Family and The Orange County Register. Elizabeth is a mother of five and lives in Southern California with her family.
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Hida Viloria
Hida (“Heeda”) Viloria is a writer, author of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award nominated memoir, Born Both: An Intersex Life (Hachette Books), and one of the world’s foremost intersex and non-binary activists, bringing an intersectional analysis to he/r work as the queer child of Latinx immigrants. Viloria is the founding director of the Intersex Campaign for Equality (IC4E), a frequent consultant (UN, Lambda Legal, Human Rights Watch), speaker (Columbia, Princeton, Stanford, NYU…), television and radio guest (Oprah, Aljazeera, 20/20, NPR, BBC…), and one the most extensively published intersex writers (TheHuffington Post, The NYT, The Daily Beast, The Advocate, The American Journal of Bioethics, CNN.com, Ms…). Born Both has been praised by Th
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Kristen Richardson
Kristen Richardson grew up in a family of debutantes. She didn’t come out, but wrote a popular article about it for Rookie. She worked at Harper’s and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Sara Billups
Sara Billups is a Seattle-based writer and cultural commentator whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Christianity Today, Aspen Ideas, and others. Sara writes Bitter Scroll, a monthly Substack letter and co-hosts the podcast That’s the Spirit. She earned a Doctor of Ministry in the Sacred Art of Writing at the Peterson Center for the Christian Imagination at Western Theological Seminary.
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Sara works to help wavering Christians remain steadfast through cultural storms and continues to hope for the flourishing of the Church amid deep political and cultural division in America.
Her first book, Orphaned Believers, follows the journey of a generation raised in the 80s and 90s of evangelicalism, reckoning with the tradition that raised the -
Nicole Byer
Nicole Byer is one of the most versatile voices in the comedy landscape today. An actress, comedian, writer, author and podcaster, she is perhaps most well-known as the host of Netflix’s hit reality competition baking series Nailed It!, which has gained a cult following of viewers since its premiere on the streaming platform in 2018. The show has received multiple Emmy nominations and, in 2020, Nicole made history by becoming the first black woman ever to be nominated in the category of “Outstanding Host for A Reality or Competition Program.”
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Nicole is also known for her standout appearances on MTV’s hit show Girl Code, a female-driven comedy series that opens the dialogue for the wonders and woes of womanhood.
Listeners can hear Nicole on fi -
Shugri Said Salh
Shugri Salh is author of the memoir The Last Nomad (Algonquin, 2021) and a supporting actor in the Apple TV+ “Little America” episode set in an immigrant Somali community.
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She was born in the desert of Somalia in 1974 and spent her early years living with her grandmother in the desert as a nomad. In 1992, after the civil war broke out in her home country, she emigrated to North America. She attended nursing school at Pacific Union college and graduated with honors.
Shugri has been storytelling since she could talk. From her grandmother and the nomadic community in which she was raised, she heard stories and learned of their power to entertain, teach, and transform. When she isn’t writing or telling stories, she works as an infusion nurse. Shu -
Jenai Auman
Jenai Auman is a Filipina American writer and artist. She draws from her years in church leadership as well as her trauma-informed training to write on healing, hope, and the way forward. She is passionate about providing language so readers can find a faith that frees. She received her bachelor's degree in behavioral health science and is currently pursuing a master's in spiritual formation at Northeastern Seminary. Jenai lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Tyler, and their sons, Quinn and Graham.
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Melanie Brooks
Melanie Brooks is the author of the memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vine Leaves Press, 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017) She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and in the M.F.A. program at Western Connecticut State University and professional writing at Northeastern University. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast writing program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She has had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from loss and grief to parenting and aging published in The B
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