Contributors

Editor

Lydia Wylie-Kellermann is a writer, editor, activist, and mother. She lives with her partner and two boys in the neighborhood where she grew up in southwest Detroit. She is the managing editor of Geez magazine, a quarterly, non-profit, ad-free, print magazine at the intersection of art, activism, and faith. She is the co-founder and curator of radicaldiscipleship.net, a blog lifting up stories from faith communities that actively yearn for a world defined by peace, justice, and dignity. She is a contributor to multiple books, including Rally: Litanies for the Lovers of God and Neighbor (Brittney Winn Lee, ed., Upper Room Books, 2020); Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice (Ched Myers, ed., Cascade Books, 2016); and Bury the Dead: Stories of Death and Dying, Resistance and Discipleship (Laurel Dykstra, ed.; Cascade Books, 2013).

Anthology Contributors

Frida Berrigan lives in New London, Connecticut, with her husband and three children. A war-tax resister, community gardener, and writer, Frida contributes to TomDispatch and Waging Nonviolence. She is the author of It Runs In The Family: On Being Raised By Radicals and Growing Into Rebellious Motherhood (OR Books, 2015), which recounts her experience growing up at Jonah House, the community founded by her parents Elizabeth McAlister and Philip Berrigan. 

Leona Brown is a Gitxsan refugee mother of 3 from the Killerwhale Clan of the Fireweed House living on the unceded, ancestral, and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver British Columbia). Leona is a student and teacher of Indigenous plant traditions sharing her knowledge in schools and community groups.

Jennifer Castro is director of programs at the Martinez Street Women’s Center in San Antonio, Texas. She has a B.A. in English and has enjoyed a meandering yet fulfilling career finding paid work in a variety of contexts including community and women’s health, public education, international relief and development, communications, and women’s advocacy. Jenny is passionate about justice, truth and their connection. She is a fierce mother of three remarkable children and has been married to Jake for nearly 20 years. She loves camping, authentic conversation and a good cup of coffee.  

Laurel Dykstra is an Anglican priest and author who has been active in Christian movements for social and ecological justice for more than 30 years. With partner Julie and co-parent Bruce, Laurel is parent to twin 17-year-olds in an urban core housing cooperative on Coast Salish territory (Vancouver, British Columbia). Author of Set Them Free: The Other Side of Exodus (Wipf & Stock, 2012) and Uncle Aiden (Babybloc, 2005) and the editor of Bury the Dead: Stories of Death and Dying, Resistance and Discipleship (Cascade, 2013), Liberating Biblical Study (Wipf & Stock, 2011), Laurel is currently working on a book on spirituality and interspecies lonliness in the Anthropocene era.

Janice Fialka has been an activist for 50 years, married 40 years, and parenting 30 years! Her experiences are rooted in a relentless pursuit to speak truth to power, to honor the dignity of each human being, and to intentionally build relationships and community.  She loves shoveling snow and feeling the wind in her hair.  Her professional roles include social worker, founder of teen health centers in Michigan, author of several books and articles, a film, and a nationally recognized presenter on topics related to disability and parenting a child with a disability.  Her most precious identity is mother of Micah and Emma, both of whom are featured in her book, What Matters: Reflections on Disability, Community and Love and the documentary, Intelligent Lives.  To her surprise and delight, she has found her power in storytelling.

Kate Foran is from the woodlands of the Connecticut River Watershed, where she was formed by blue-collar poets, walkers, fishermen, and Catholic Workers.  She is a freelance writer and poet from East Hartford, CT. She is a writing coach for Brave Writer and serves on the board of Word and World: A People’s School. She is currently mentoring her two daughters in self-directed learning.

Jennifer Harvey is a writer, educator, and public speaker. Her work focuses on the encounter between religion and ethics, race, gender, activism, politics, spirituality, and just about every other area of social life in the U.S. Her greatest passion continually returns her to racial justice and white anti-racism work. She engages with faith communities, non-profits, and other groups seeking to deepen their justice commitments. She teaches full-time in Drake University’s Philosophy and Religion Department and is the author of Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America (Abingdon Press, 2018).

Sarah and Nathan Holst live in the Tischer Creek Watershed in Duluth, Minnesota. They center queer, racial, and environmental justice in their work of movement building and creating relational, healing spaces. Out of connection to place and commitment to truth-telling within legacies of trauma and resilience, Nathan “catches” songs and Sarah writes and creates visual art. In their journey of being new parents to baby Sage, they incorporate what they have learned about being fully human in a hurting world while together visioning and embodying restoration.

Michelle Martinez was born in the Latinx diaspora of Detroit. She is a climate justice organizer fighting for the survival of Black and Brown people. Since 2006, she has fought gross expansion of fossil fuels and erosion of democracy, working to restore human rights and our integral connection to Earth, home, and hearth. She is the coordinator for Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition.

Nick Peterson is husband to NaKisha, father to twin boys Zayden and Zander, and a doctoral student at Emory University in Atlanta. He spends most of his time thinking and writing about the complex relationship between Christian practices and anti-blackness. His teaching focuses on the pastoral and ministerial arts of preaching and worship. He is an ordained itinerant deacon in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and serves on the ministerial staff at his local church. 

Dee Dee Risher is a writer, editor, and retreat leader. She is the author of The Soulmaking Room (Upper Room Books, 2016). She was editor of the Christian social justice magazines The Other Side and Conspire. She is a cofounder of Philadelphia’s Alternative Seminary and helped start Vine and Fig Tree, a faith-based, intentional cooperative housing community in the Germantown neighborhood, of which she is a longtime resident. She has published more than 200 articles in such magazines as Sojourners, Progressive Christian, The Utne Reader, Geez, and Grid, and her blogs appear in The Huffington Post, Theological Curves, and other venues. She and partner William O’Brien are grateful for all the things their children Luke and Thea teach them.

en sawyer and Marcia Lee are co-founders of Taproot Sanctuary, an urban retreat center and intentional community focused on living in right relationship with the earth and our neighbors in Detroit.   Through this community, they are exploring and experimenting on how to live a more integrated and interdependent relationship with all of creation.  en is a taiko drummer, woodworker, artist, mushroom grower, broom and spoon maker, and farmer.  Marcia is a Courage and Renewal retreat facilitator and leadership coach; restorative justice specialist; facilitator with PeoplesHub, an online movement school; and co-madre for Healing by Choice!, a collaboration of women of color doing healing justice work in Detroit.  Together, through the love and power of their ancestors, spiritual traditions, and community, they are committed to living into the world we need for our children’s children and the rest of creation to thrive.

Susan K. Taylor has spent her adult life in the intersections of justice and money. She is a partner at Just Money Advisors, which specializes in strategies that help investors work for justice through their finances. A Ph.D. economist living in Louisville, Kentucky, Susan is the delighted and grateful mother of two young adults. She is the author of What About Our Money? A Faith Response (United Methodist Women) and resources for Faith and Money Network, where she is on the board. She also serves on the Mennonite Education Agency’s Investment Committee and in a financial advisory capacity for Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries.

Randy Woodley is a Keetoowah Cherokee (legal descendent) teacher, poet, activist, former pastor, missiologist, distinguished speaker and historian. He was ordained to the ministry through the American Baptist Churches. Randy’s Ph.D. is in Intercultural Studies from Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. His books include Decolonizing Evangelicalism: An 11:59pm Conversation (Wipf & Stock 2020), The Harmony Tree: A Story of Healing and Community (Friesen Press, 2016), Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision (Eerdmans, 2012) and Living in Color: Embracing God’s Passion for Ethnic Diversity (IVP, 2004). He has authored numerous book chapters and contributed essays and articles in compilations such as the Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics (Baker Academic), Poverty and Poor in the World’s Religious Traditions (Praeger), The Justice Project (Baker), and The Global Dictionary of Theology (IVP). Randy and his wife, Edith co-sustain Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice (www.eloheh.org) where they teach and learn and operate Eloheh Farm and Seeds (www.elohehseeds.com)

Bill Wylie-Kellermann is a nonviolent community activist, teacher, pastor, parent of two adult daughters and grandfather to four children. He is the author of six books, most recently Dying Well: The Resurrected Life of Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann (Cass Community Press, 2018), which testifies to resurrection freedom as witnessed through the death and life of the partner with whom he shared the vocations of marriage and parenting. His other books include Where the Water Goes Around: Beloved Detroit (Cascade Books, 2017); Principalities in Particular: A Practical Theology of the Powers that Be (Fortress, 2017); and Seasons of Faith and Conscience: Reflections of Liturgical Direct Action (Orbis, 1991; Wipf &Stock, 2009). In Jesus, he bets his life on gospel non-violence, good news to the poor, Word made flesh, and freedom from the power of death.