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.

Andrew Wilson is Teaching Pastor at King’s Church London, and has degrees in history and theology from Cambridge (MA) and King’s College London (PhD). He is a columnist for Christianity Today, and has written several books. The most recent is Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. Historian Mark Noll wrote, “Andrew Wilson’s book is extraordinary in every way: extraordinary in the breadth of research; extraordinary in the multitude of world-significant events that Wilson identifies for 1776; extraordinary in the depth of his insight on what those events meant (and continue to mean); extraordinary in the verve with which he makes his arguments; and, not least, extraordinary in the persuasive Christian framework in which he sets the book. Remaking the World is a triumph of both creative historical analysis and winsome Christian interpretation.”

Amy Baik Lee has written that in every place her life has taken her, "there have been hints of beauty and great knocks of mercy that have called to me from beyond my surroundings, always speaking of a King and Friend and Father whose presence is truly Home.” That sense of longing, those clues that maybe we were made for a different world, make their way out in every thing Amy writes, and especially in her new book, This Homeward Ache: How Our Yearning for the Life to Come Spurs on Our Life Today. In this episode, Amy and Jonathan Rogers talk about homeward longing, the idea of Sehnsucht, and the importance of writing in community.

In 2001, Henry Louis Gates announced the discovery of an unpublished novel called The Bondswoman’s Narrative, written in the 1850s by an enslaved woman named Hannah Crafts. If Gates had the authorship right, it would be the oldest known novel by an African-American woman. But many people doubted the book’s authorship. In 2013, however, Gregg Hecimovich produced evidence that The Bondswoman’s Narrative was indeed written by a black woman in the1850s. Hannah Crafts, he demonstrated, was the pen name of Hannah Bonds, who escaped from slavery in North Carolina. Dr. Hecimovich’s new book is The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondswoman’s Narrative. It’s a biography of Hannah Bonds. It’s also a detective story, telling how Gregg Hecimovich and many others uncovered the fascinating true story behind Hannah Bonds’s fictional story.

Dr. Tiffany Eberle Kriner is Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College in Illinois. She is also a farmer. Her new collection of essays is In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest Farm. In it, Dr. Kriner connects culture, ecology, faith, and literature, and invites readers to cultivate fruitful conversations between literature and the environments in which they live.

Emma Fox is the author of The Carver and the Queen, an historical fantasy novel based on the folklore of Siberia. In this episode, Emma talks with Jonathan Rogers about piano lessons, teaching and mentoring young writers, and how she got interested in Slavic folklore. 

Philip Yancey has written and published more than 25 books. He is known for his honesty, his willingness to wade into difficult questions–and, more to the point, his unwillingness to give easy answers to those difficult questions. In his latest book, published by Rabbit Room Press, Philip Yancey engages the seventeenth-century poet and preacher, John Donne. Undone is Philip Yancey’s modern rendering of John Donne’s Devotions, a collection of prose meditations that Donne wrote on his sickbed in 1623. Philip Yancey makes Donne’s gorgeous but often convoluted prose more accessible to 21st century readers.

Diana Glyer teaches in the honors college at Azusa Pacific University. Her writing and research focus on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the other Inklings. Her most recent book is The Major and the Missionary. Dr. Glyer edited this collection of letters between Warren Lewis, the brother of C.S. Lewis, and Dr. Blanche Biggs, a medical missionary in Papua New Guinea. Their conversation spans faith, literature, fear, doubt, tragedy, sickness, health, friendship, and life & death itself. 

Carolyn Leiloglou’s new middle-grade novel is Beneath the Swirling Sky: Book 1 of the Restorationists Trilogy. It’s a book about art, creativity, and reclaiming the creative energy that comes so naturally to small children. It’s also about a family of people who can go into old paintings and walk around in them. Like her main character Vincent, Carolyn is the granddaughter of art collectors and the daughter of an art teacher. She is also the mother of four wildly creative children.

Dr. Jennifer L. Holberg is professor and chair of the English department at Calvin University and codirector of the Calvin Center for Faith and Writing, the home of the Festival of Faith and Writing, which will be happening live and in person next April, for the first time since 2018. Her new book is Nourishing Narratives: The Power of Story to Shape Our Faith. In this episode, Dr. Holberg and Jonathan Rogers talk about the stories, true and false, that we believe ourselves to be living in–and how we might tell better stories for ourselves and others.

Curt Thompson is a psychiatrist, a speaker, and the author of several books–most recently, The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope. In this episode, Curt and Jonathan Rogers talk about what it means to be hospitable to your own suffering, engaging suffering as the way of redemption, and the role of storytelling in mental and spiritual health.

Harrison Scott Key's new memoir is How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. It’s the story of how infidelity tore his marriage apart, and how he and his wife Lauren patched it back together. It is hilarious, and it’s wise, and it’s exceedingly hopeful. To quote the jacket copy, “How to stay Married is a comic romp unlike any in contemporary literature, a wild Pilgrim’s Progress through the hellscape of marriage and the mysteries of mercy.”

In this, the final episode of the Hometown Stories summer series, writers from The Habit Membership tell stories about NEW hometowns. Hometowns change, and for a little while, at least, you can find yourself a stranger in your own hometown.  Loren Warnemuende: Michigan  Rachel Donahue: Spain Desi Ana Sartini: Southeast Asia Holly Schurter: Illinois

Karen Swallow Prior is one of the leading evangelical writers and commentators our time. Her new book is The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis. In this episode, Dr. Prior and I talk about the role of imagination in the making of meaning, and we talk about what happens when we start to examine the unexamined metaphors that make it possible for us to make sense of the world while also limiting our possibilities for making sense of the world. Subscribe to Dr. Prior's new Substack newsletter.

In this, the sixth episode of the Hometown Stories summer series, writers from The Habit Membership take us to all four points of the compass. Sara Dredge takes us north to Ontario, Canada. Sarah Bannerman, Lindsay Kyle, and  Monica Olsen take us south to Mississippi and Louisiana. Laura Love goes east to China. And Shannon Stephens takes us west–or, in any case, to the West Virginia of his childhood.

Russell Moore is Editor-in-Chief of Christianity Today. His new book is Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America. He invites unmoored and discouraged Christians to step into an uncertain future, letting go of the kind of culture-warring, politicized Christianity that has led us to this moment of reckoning. In Losing Our Religion, Dr. Moore shows how we might steer clear of both cynicism and complicity in order to imagine a different, hopeful vision for the church.

Summer Short’s new book is The Legend of Greyhallow. Kirkus Reviews called it “A delightful, engaging otherworldly adventure sure to charm. This fun read artfully combines our reality with Greyhallow's...fans of The Lord of the Rings and portal fantasies will find much to enjoy.”

This week’s episode, the fifth in the Hometown Stories series, takes us to Texas. We’ll blow up a gas station in the Panhandle. We’ll check out some tumbleweeds in West Texas. We’ll pop over to Bryan Texas, to wonder how and why Bryan made somebody’s best-of list, and why a big-city reporter would want to deny them their moment of glory. And finally, we’ll go squirrel hunting in tiny Bluff Dale Texas. Featuring stories from the late Thomas McKenzie, Colleen Rudolph, Christie Purifoy, and David Graves.

In honor of the Fourth of July, this episode of The Habit Podcast continues the Hometown Stories summer series with five reminiscences of small-town America by writers from The Habit Membership. Prepare for a gauzy, nostalgic look at the kind of Americana that makes you want to eat watermelon and listen to music by John Philip Sousza. Expect parades, fireworks, corn on the cob, pioneers on the Western Plains, and an outdoor concert involving Hank Williams, Junior. Featuring stories from Amanda Duvall, Carrie Givens, Micah Hawkinson, Megan Cozzens Huwa, and Chelsea Barnwell.

Andrew Peterson is a singer-songwriter, he’s the author of The Wingfeather Saga as well as two nonfiction books, Adorning the Dark and The God of the Garden. He’s the executive producer of the Wingfeather television series. He’s the founder and president of The Rabbit Room. He’s a sought-after speaker. In this episode, recorded in front of a live audience at The Habit Writers' Weekend, Andrew and Jonathan Rogers talked about how Andrew juggles the roles of musician, writer, and filmmaker, and how those roles influence one another. They talked about sharing art out of love for the audience instead of love of self. They talked about the importance of finding–or, perhaps, making–creative community. And they talked about gardening.

Hometowns are full of fathers and mothers. In this episode, Andrew Peterson and four writers from The Habit Membership share stories involving their fathers and mothers. Andrew Peterson on Lake Butler, Florida Gina Gallagher on Morton, Pennsylvania Kori Frazier Morgan on Kent, Ohio Katie Rizzo on Aspen, Colorado Judith Millar on Fivemiletown, Northern Ireland and Amarillo, Texas Find out more about The Habit Membership at TheHabit.co

In this episode the Hometown Stories series continues with a trip to California. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, California is large. It contains multitudes. Whatever you envision when you think of California, you can be sure the opposite is also true. This tour of the Golden State is brought to you by four writers from The Habit Membership—Gypsy Martin, Jaclyn Hoselton, Kendra Britez, and Reagan Dregge, all of whom grew up in California but found themselves elsewhere as adults.  There's room for you in The Habit Membership. Find out more at TheHabit.co.

This episode kicks off the "Hometown Stories" summer series. As the name suggests, this  series features stories from writers' hometowns. In this episode: Jonathan Rogers on Warner Robins, Georgia Anna Eastland on New Denver, British Columbia Jana Shirk on the Finger Lakes region of New York Elizabeth Harwell on Murray, Kentucky This episode features writers from The Habit Membership.

For nearly twenty years, Ben Shive has been producing and collaborating with musicians including (but not limited to) JJ Heller, Colony House, Ellie Holcombe, Dave Barnes, The Gray Havens, Andrew Peterson, Melanie Penn, Randall Goodgame, Sandra McCracken, Jill Phillips, and Keith and Kristyn Getty. He recently signed on as a writer for Getty Music. Ben sat down to talk with Jonathan Rogers about hymn-writing and the  benefits and frustrations of limits.

K. B. Hoyle is a writer of many genres and talents. She’s the author of the teen fantasy series, The Gateway Chronicles, and the adult dystopian series, The Breeder Cycle. She has also done fairytale retelling and science-fiction fantasy. She’s a columnist and staff writer at Christ and Pop Culture, and she is the cofounder, CEO, and acquisitions editor of Owl's Nest Publishers, an independent press specializing in books for adolescents. In this episode, KB (Karin) Hoyle and Jonathan Rogers talk about the ways our cultural narratives act on us individually and in society as a whole. And we talk about stories that woo rather than argue.

Arthur Boers’s new memoir is Shattered: A Son Picks up the Pieces of His Father’s Rage. In it he reflects on coming of age in an immigrant family scarred by violence. In this episode, Arthur Boers and Jonathan Rogers talk about breaking family codes of silence, living with ambiguity while still taking a clear moral position, and beach glass.

Claude Atcho is a pastor in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the author of Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just. As Josh Larsen has said, this work of Christian literary criticism is written "with the passion of a book lover and the urgency of a preacher." In this episode, Claude Atcho and Jonathan Rogers visit some of the great works of twentieth century Black literature. They talk about a kind of theological reading that goes well beyond empathy. They also discuss what it means to acknowledge the image of God in another person—among other things.