Russ Ramsey is a gifted storyteller and a trusted guide in the world of art. His new book is Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About The Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive. In this episode, Russ and Jonathan Rogers talk about sunflowers, the sublime, and the connection between suffering and wonder.

Stephanie Duncan Smith is a senior editor for HarperOne. She has spent her career developing award-winning and bestselling authors. She is the creator of Slant Letter, a Substack email newsletter for writers who want to deepen their craft and do it in style. She is also the author of Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway. In this episode, Stephanie Duncan Smith and Jonathan Rogers talk about creative risk as a way of "going first" for the reader—and giving the reader a little more courage.

Steven James has written and published about twenty books in the last couple of decades. Most of his novels and been thrillers. But with his new novel, Rift, he’s doing something completely new: young adult Appalachian folktale horror. Steven has lived in the southern Appalachians since the 1990s. The part of East Tennessee where Rift is set was hit really hard by Hurricane Helene a couple of weeks ago. Steven’s publisher, Rebecca Reynolds of Sky Turtle Books, also lives in the region. She is putting together a project to collect old stories from Appalachia, creating an anthology that can be used to raise funds for the area.  She needs help finding the storytellers and their stories. Part 2 of this episode is a short conversation with Rebecca Reynholds about the Old Stories project. Here's a video about The Old Stories: An Appalachian Anthology.

Carolyn Leiloglou is the author of the middle grade fantasy series The Restorationists. Book Two of that series, Between Flowers and Bones, has been recently released. In this episode, Carolyn and I talk about writing about family, balancing motherhood with creative pursuits, and the ways that interacting with visual art enriches writing. Here's a video of Carolyn in San Antonio's McNay Art Museum, referenced in the episode.

John Hendrix is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of many books. His award-winning illustrations have also appeared on book jackets, newspapers, and magazines all over the world. The Society of Illustrators named John the Distinguished Educator in the Arts for 2024. He is the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and the founding Chair of the MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture program at Washington University in St. Louis. John’s new graphic novel is The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.  In this episode, John and Jonathan Rogers talk about the nature of myth, the creative power of friendship, the beginning of the Inklings, and the sad end of the Inklings.

Daniel Silliman is senior news editor for Christianity Today. He earned a doctorate in American studies from Heidelberg University in Germany and has taught US history and humanities at Heidelberg, the University of Notre Dame, Valparaiso University, and Milligan University. His new book is One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation. From the jacket copy: "Impious and amoral, petty and vindictive, Richard Nixon is not the typical protagonist of a religious biography. But spiritual drama is at the heart of this former president’s tragic story."

In this back-to-school episode Jonathan Rogers speaks with Rachel Griffis and Rachel De Smith Roberts about their book, Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age. Dr. Griffis is a professor of English at Spring Arbor University in Michigan, and Dr. Roberts is an associate professor of English at North Greenville University in South Carolina. In this episode, they talk about “Deep Reading” as a corrective to the vices of Distraction, Hostility, and Consumerism. 

Jared C. Wilson is an author of over twenty books and a popular speaker at churches and conferences around the world. He serves as Pastor for Preaching and the Director of the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri. He is also an Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Author in Residence at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. His new book is The Storied Life: Christian Writing as Art and Worship. In this episode, Jared and Jonathan Rogers talk about the multi-faceted calling of a writer, and the ways that writing a means of transformation for the writer as much as a means of communication to a reader. 

As of last week, all three books of Jonathan Rogers's Wilderking Trilogy, 20th Anniversary Deluxe Hardback edition, have been released into the wild. The Bark of the Bog Owl released in June. And now The Secret of the Swamp King and The Way of the Wilderking are available wherever you buy books. These new editions have gorgeous new covers by Stephen Crotts and exceedingly swampy new interior illustrations by Joe Hox. Joe Hox is Jonathan's guest on this episode of The Habit Podcast. Get the books here. Get the audiobooks (read by the author) here.

Besides being an award-winning teacher and professor of theology & ethics at Lipscomb University, Lee Camp hosts No Small Endeavor, a podcast that asks What does it mean to live a good life? What is true happiness? What are the habits, practices, and dispositions that facilitate human flourishing? Lee Camp explores these and similar questions with some of the most influential authors, scientists, artists, psychologists, philosophers, and theologians. In this episode, Dr. Camp and Jonathan Rogers talk about ethics, virtue theory, and writerly habits.

Lanta Davis is a professor of humanities and literature in the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University. Her new book is Becoming by Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation. In this episode, Dr. Davis and Jonathan Rogers talk about the perhaps counterintuitive truth that neglecting to engage our imagination makes us more susceptible to imaginative influences that we don’t choose. They also talk about the difference between an idol and an icon, and they talk about the role of weirdness in spiritual formation. They also talk about raccoons and unicorns.

Joel Miller has been an editor, a publisher, and an author. He is currently working on a book on the history of the book. He also writes an excellent twice-a-week Substack newsletter called Miller’s Book Review. In this episode, Joel and Jonathan Rogers discuss Joel's journey toward publication—and how Joel gets so much reading and writing done while holding down a full-time job an raising a family.

Dr. Shirley Mullen is President Emerita of Houghton College in New York State and the author of Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future. In this episode, Dr. Mullen and Jonathan Rogers discuss the idea that, in an era of such dangerous polarization, the “courageous middle” is not a place of bland averaging, moral cowardice, indecisiveness, or indifference, but a place where thoughtful people work with urgency to foster attentive listening–listening even to those with whom they disagree–in pursuit of what is true and good and beautiful.

Dr. Junius Johnson is an independent scholar and teacher and a public intellectual who devotes his time to thinking and writing about whatever is noble and excellent, and how to bring those things to bear to nurture meaningful lives. You can find out more about his classes at JuniusJohnson.com. In this episode, Junius and Jonathan Rogers talk about receiving wonder and adding to the stock of the world’s wonders. And Junius asks, Who invented dragons?

Karen Stiller writes about  the intersections between faith and the world, social issues, matters of justice and doing better. Her most recent book is Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life. In this episode, Karen and Jonathan Rogers talk about holiness as a matter of loving people well as opposed to telling them how they have fallen short–and what that holiness has to do with the writing life. They also talk about writing in the midst of grief. Read Karen's essay, "Why Keep Writing in the Midst of Grief?"

In this interview, recorded in front of a live audience at The Habit Summer Writers Weekend in June 2024, Doug McKelvey discusses the ups and downs of a muti-faceted writing career. Doug is the author of the Every Moment Holy books.

Elizabeth Oldfield hosts The Sacred, a podcast about our deepest values, the stories that shape us, and how we can build empathy and understanding between people who are very different. She has a regular column for UnHerd and has appeared on BBC One, Radio 5Live, Radio 4, and The World Service. Her work has appeared in The Financial Times, Prospect, The Times, CNN, The Guardian, and beyond. She is also a contributing editor at Comment magazine, a guest lecturer at the University of Birmingham, and former director and now senior fellow at Theos, the UK's leading religion and society think tank. Her new book is Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. 

The 20th-Anniversary Deluxe Hardback Edition of The Bark of the Bog Owl is now available. It has a new cover by Stephen Crotts, new interior illustrations by Joe Hox, and bonus material (poems, songs, riddles) by Jonathan Rogers. To celebrate the Bog Owl's twentieth birthday, Jonathan reads an excerpt in this bonus episode.  You can get your own copy of The Bark of the Bog Owl at the Rabbit Room store or wherever you buy books. The audiobook, narrated by the author, is available at Audible.com.

In this episode of The Habit Podcast, Read Aloud Revival's Sarah MacKenzie sits in the host's chair to interview Jonathan Rogers about The Bark of the Bog Owl, 20th Anniversary Edition, which releases this week. 

Wesley Vander Lugt  is a pastor, theologian, writer, teacher, nonprofit leader, and arts advocate with a passion for beauty, slowness, cultivation, and kinship. He currently works as the Acting Director of the Leighton Ford Center for Theology, the Arts, and Gospel Witness and is Adjunct Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte. He is also the Co-Founder of Kinship Plot, a community of learning and practice imagining and embodying resonant relationships of every kind. His new book is Beauty Is Oxygen: Finding a Faith that Breathes. In this episode, Wes and Jonathan Rogers discuss just how necessary beauty is.

Julie Lane-Gay is a horticulturalist and a writer. Her work has appeared in a range of publications including Reader's Digest, Fine Gardening, Faith Today, Anglican Planet, and The Englewood Review of Books. She sometimes teaches courses at Regent College in Vancouver and edits the college's journal, CRUX. She also writes obituaries. Her new book is The Riches of Your Grace: Living in the Book of Common Prayer. In this episode, Julie and Jonathan Rogers talk about finding our identity in stories and language that someone else has written.

Weakness doesn’t feel like a gift. But author, podcaster, and songwriter Eric Schumacher believes that it is. His new book is The Good Gift of Weakness: God’s Strength Made Perfect in the Story of Redemption. In this episode, Eric and Jonathan Rogers talk about the gifts that follow when we come to terms with our weakness, what it means to be in a posture to receive rather than to strive, and the relief that comes from letting go of the need to control.

Poet Rebecca Gomez is the author and also the illustrator of Mari in the Margins, a middle-grade novel in verse. Her editor, also a poet, is Rachel Donahue of Bandersnatch Books. For the first time on The Habit Podcast, in this episode Jonathan Rogers is in conversation with both the author and her editor. 

Lore Ferguson Wilbert writes about spiritual formation, faith, culture, and theology in life. She is the proprietor of an excellent Substack called Sayable.  She has also been known to teach writing and do editorial work. Her new book is The Understory: An Invitation to Rootedness and Resilience from the Forest Floor. In this episode, Lore and Jonathan Rogers talk about what it means to really believe that death can’t help but give rise to life. We also talk about mycorrhizal fungi.

As host of the Read-Aloud Revival Podcast and the Read-Aloud Revival Online Community, Sarah MacKenzie has brought untold joy to bookish families. Besides connecting families with other people’s books, Sarah has started writing and publishing her own picture books. Her latest is Because Barbara: Barbara Cooney Paints Her World. Illustrated by Eileen Ryan Ewen, this picture-book biography tells the story of one of America’s best-loved and most celebrated children’s book illustrators. Because Barbara is available for preorder. If you order by June 18, 2024, you can get free Bonuses, including a Family Book Club Guide, audiobook, videobook, and an invitation to a Zoom Book Party Picnic with the author & Illustrator!.

Malcolm Guite is a poet-priest. Jeremy Begbie has called him "one of the most important Christian poets of our time." In this episode, Malcolm and Jonathan Rogers discuss imagination as a way of knowing. This episode is brought to you by The Habit Membership, a community of writers who learn together and give each other a little more courage. Find out more at TheHabit.co.

Besides being a bird enthusiast, Courtney Ellis is a pastor in Southern California, the author of several books, and the host of a podcast called The Thing with Feathers. Her new book is Looking Up: A Birder’s Guide to Hope through Grief. In this episode, Courtney and Jonathan Rogers talk about delight, presence, and cultivating attention. 

Leif Enger writes novels about good people living through bad times. His new book, I Cheerfully Refuse, epitomizes what the Los Angeles Tines calls Enger's “musical, sometimes magical and deeply satisfying kind of storytelling.” In this episode, Leif Enger and Jonathan Rogers talk about dystopian fiction; courage, literacy, and hope; and the bass guitar.

Emily P. Freeman spends a lot of time thinking, talking, and writing about discernment and decision-making–doing the next right thing. She hosts The Next Right Thing podcast and created The Next Right Thing Guided Journal. Her latest book is How to Walk Into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away. In this conversation, Emily and Jonathan Rogers talk about pointing and calling, the difference between discernment and decision-making, and the counterintuitive truth that, when it comes to discerning the next best step, remembering is more important than predicting.

Faith Chang struggles with perfectionism. Nevertheless, she pushed through and finished a book–about perfectionism. It’s called Peace Over Perfection: Enjoying a Good God When You Feel You're Never Good Enough. Faith is the guest on this week’s episode of The Habit Podcast.

Kenneth Padgett and Shay Gregorie are the founders of Wolfbane Books. They are also co-authors of the Story of God trilogy of picture books, beautifully illustrated by Aedan Peterson—The Story of God with Us, The Story of God the King,andThe Story of God Our Savior. In this episode, Kenneth and Shay and Jonathan Rogers talk about visual storytelling, Biblical theology (as distinct from systematic theology), mountains, and alligators. 

When pastor Brian Zahnd was walking five hundred miles across Spain on the Camino de Santiago, he contemplated hundreds of crosses and crucifixes. He asked the question, "What does this mean? Why is the image of a man nailed to a tree the most commonly represented story-image in the world?" Those ruminations gave rise to his new book, The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross. In this episode, Brian Zahnd and Jonathan Rogers talk about theopoetics, the eternal recurrence of holy awe, and the role of aesthetics in the life of the church.

Sarah Arthur has written and published a dozen books over the last twenty years or so, but her new book, Once a Queen, is her first foray into fiction. Once a Queen is a portal fantasy with clear connections to the books of E. Nesbit, The Secret Garden, and the Chronicles of Narnia. In this conversation, Sarah and Jonathan Rogers talk about literary influences (both conscious and unconscious), writers’ groups, and being “a spy for hope.”

Andi Ashworth and Charlie Peacock live at the intersection of hospitality and creativity. This husband and wife duo founded Art House America, a unique artistic hub of rich hospitality, conversations of consequence, and imaginative creativity. Charlie is a Grammy-winning record producer. Andi is an author, a mentor, and a paragon of hospitality. Together they wrote a new book, Why Everything that Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much. In this conversation, Andi and Charlie speak with Jonathan Rogers about the idea of cultivating a life of the mind while being firmly planted in our flesh-and-bone, earthly existence. We talk about the ways that "Love can be the trustworthy basis of imaginative and creative good.” And we talk about Andi’s journaling practice, among other things.

Amy F. Davis Abdallah is a professor, writer, speaker, and creator of rituals. Her latest book is Meaning in the Moment: How Rituals Help Us Move Through Joy, Pain, and Everything in Between. Starting with the foundation that rituals are a core, and underexplored, part of Christian practice, she draws from theology, psychology, and personal experiences in creating rituals for herself and others. In this episode, Amy and Jonathan Rogers talk about the difference between communicating meaning and communicating information. They talk about the ways we ritualize without knowing it. And Jonathan asks Amy whether she has rituals around her own writing life.

Mike Cosper is the director of podcasting for Christianity Today, where he hosts The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill and Cultivated: A Podcast About Faith and Work. He is the author of several books, most recently Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found.

Allen Levi is a singer-songwriter and an exceedingly talented storyteller.  His memoir from a few years ago, The Last Sweet Mile, is a very moving account of his life with his brother–especially the last year before his brother died. Allen has also been a lawyer and a judge. And now he is a novelist. Theo of Golden, Allen Levi’s first novel, is the story of a mysterious and kind stranger who comes to a small town.

Greg Wilbur is Founder and Dean of Students at New College Franklin. A composer and  church musician, he recently released a new album of hymns and psalms called Securely I Will Dwell: Songs for the Church. In this episode, Greg and Jonathan Rogers talk about collaboration, friendship, and writing for the local church.

Grace Hamman is a writer and independent scholar of Middle English contemplative writing and poetry. She is also the host of the podcast, Old Books with Grace. Her first book is Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages. In this episode Dr. Hamman and Jonathan Rogers talk about the gift of surprise, the discipline of openness, and old books as a guard against chronological snobbery.

Joy Clarkson is the author of Aggressively Happy and host of the podcast, Speaking with Joy. She is the books editor for Plough Quarterly and a research associate in theology and literature at King's College London. Joy completed her PhD in theology at the University of St Andrews, where she researched how art can be a resource of hope and consolation. Her new book is You Are a Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, And Prayer.In this episode, Joy and I talk about the ways that figurative language shapes the way we think about the world and ourselves, and Joy tries to convince Jonathan that the distinction between simile and metaphor is meaningful. This episode is sponsored by Writing with Puddleglum, a six-week creative writing course by Jonathan Rogers. Find out more and register at TheHabit.co/Puddleglum. Class starts Tuesday, January 30.

Brian Brown is the founder and executive director of The Anselm Society, an organization dedicated to a renaissance of the Christian imagination. Along with Jane Scharl, Brian edited a collection of essays called Why We Create: Reflections on The Creator, The Creation, and Creating. In this episode, Brian and Jonathan Rogers talk about the Creation, bringing order out of disorder, and the distinctions between cultivating, naming, and subcreating. This episode is sponsored by Writing with Puddleglum, a six-week creative writing course by Jonathan Rogers. Find out more and register at TheHabit.co/Puddleglum. Class starts Tuesday, January 30.

Emily Jensen is the co-founder and content director of Risen Motherhood. She is the host of the Risen Motherhood Podcast and an author. Her most recent book is He is Strong: Devotions for When You Feel Weak. In this episode, Emily and Jonathan Rogers talk about discerning the different kinds of weakness, understanding the limits of willpower, and taking action in faith when you can’t see the outcome.

Songwriter Wendell Kimbrough has been writing, recording, and performing songs based on the Psalms for the last few years. His most recent record is called You Belong. In this episode, Wendell and Jonathan Rogers talk about loneliness, perfectionism, feeling like an outsider, learning to belong–and how one writes songs that sound like the Psalms while also sounding like the Gulf Coast.

In this replay of an episode from 2022, Jonathan Rogers talks with Justin Whitmel Earley about the formation of better habits. Justin is the author of The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose in an Age of Distraction, among other books.

Garrett Taylor is the art director for the Wingfeather Saga television series. The new Art of Wingfeather book features beautiful work from Garrett and his teams. In this episode, Garrett and Jonathan Rogers discuss "truth of materials" and why the Wingfeather team chose not to use CGI to make their visual world as realistic as possible.

In 2016, Kevan Chandler and a few of his friends took a trip across Europe. Kevan’s friends carried him—literally. Kevan has spinal muscular atrophy, type 2, a disease that renders him unable to walk. But he left his wheelchair behind, and his friends carried him in a specially designed backpack, giving him access to many more places than a wheelchair could go. Kevan has told the story of that remarkable trip in a memoir called We Carry Kevan, and now in a picture book with the same title.  Besides being a writer and world traveler, Kevan Chandler heads up an organization called We Carry Kevan, which fosters a culture of creative accessibility by collaborating with families with disabilities around the world–sharing Kevan’s story to encourage and inspire, distributing specially designed carrier backpacks, and having ongoing conversations about friendship and new ideas for customized access.

Tish Harrison Warren is an Anglican priest and the writer of several books. Until recently she had a column in the New York Times. She has also had a column in Christianity Today. Her new book is Advent: The Season of Hope. It’s part of the Fullness of Time series–books about each season of the liturgical calendar, edited by Esau McCaulley. In this episode, Tish and Jonathan Rogers talk about waiting, and making Christmas weird again.

Mitali Perkins has always thought of herself as an outsider writing for outsiders. And yet she has a remarkable gift for inviting people in. She has two new books out: Hope in the Valley is a middle-grade novel. Holy Night and Little Star is a picture book for Christmas.

Illustrator Joe Sutphin has been a fixture around the Rabbit Room for many years. Highlights of his long career include illustrating The Wingfeather Saga and Little Pilgrim’s Progress. His newest book, however, is his most ambitious yet. It’s an almost 400-page graphic novel version of Richard Adams’s classic Watership Down.

Amber and Seth Haines have each written and published books of their own, but now this married couple have written a book together—The Deep Down Things: Practices for Growing Hope in Times of Despair. In this episode, Amber and Seth Haines talk with Jonathan Rogers about Gerard Manley Hopkins, writing in partnership, marriage, and recognition, among other things.