Books & Authors

Caroline Beidler, MSW is a recovery advocate and founder of the recovery storytelling platform Circle of Chairs, and has twenty years in social work and ministry. She is the author of Downstairs Church: Finding Hope in the Grit of Addiction and Trauma Recovery. Her forthcoming book, You Are Not Your Trauma: Uproot Unhealthy Patterns, Heal the Family Tree, helps you identify unhealthy patterns and live more freely without your trauma—or your family’s trauma—holding you back. She lives in eastern Tennessee.

Lemuel Blackett is an ordained minister and has been in ministry for 22 years. Originally from London, he moved to New York in the late 1980s. He is a graduate of Eastern Baptist School of Religion​. He’s currently Donor and Corporate Relations Manager at Interfaith Community Services. His book, Help, I’m Dealing with Trauma offers stories and insights to help readers acknowledge all the ways we can experience trauma and how to create a mindset to move forward. He lives in San Diego, California.

Named as one of the “top 10 religion newsmakers” of 2022, Christa Brown has persisted for two decades in working to peel back the truth about clergy sex abuse and coverups in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. She’s the author of Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation, a retired appellate attorney, a mom, a grandma, and lives with her husband in Colorado.

Cynthia Vacca Davis is an adjunct professor with an MFA in writing, teaching narrative nonfiction at Christopher Newport University. She’s written hundreds of feature stories, columns, and essays, as well as young adult novels. She enjoys telling stories, always searching for the threads that connect us to community. Her memoir Intersexion is told from alternating first-person perspectives and plays out at the intersection of social and religious tension around gender and sexuality. She lives in southwestern Virginia.

Trey Ferguson likes playing with words. Whether it be with tweets, videos, essays, sermonic presentations, Bible studies, podcasts, or speaking engagements, he’s always trying to provoke an image in a seeker with some combination of words. In addition to publishing his own newsletter, The Son Do Move, and hosting the New Living Treyslation and Three Black Men podcasts, and speaking especially in churches, his forthcoming, Theologizin’ Bigger, book helps our diverse world learn how to think bigger about God.

Brandon Flanery writes about honest, messy things, specifically around faith and sexuality. He’s published with the Colorado Springs Indy, The Scribe, Baptist News Global, and has academic essays with the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. His forthcoming memoir is about being raised in evangelical Christendom as a closeted gay man, and unwinding what is real and true for him post-closet, an ever-twisting journey—full of trailblazing, thorn bushes, and dead ends. He lives in Atlanta.

Sarah Henn Hayward is a physical therapist, a devoted book fanatic, and life-long seeker of truth. After traveling the world, meeting people of different faiths, making queer friends, and learning about human evolution, she surprised herself by rejecting her entire former belief system. Her Giving Up God: Resurrecting a Spirituality of Love and Wonder reveals the struggle for a new identity through exploring new vistas in physics, philosophy, and alternative theologies. Follow @shaywardwrites on Instagram or at sarahhennhayward.com 

Matt Kendziera is a speaker, podcaster, and musician. He is the host of the Bring It Home podcast, engaging authors, activists, and influencers on questions most people run from. He’s also a collaborator with organizations such as Rachel’s Challenge. Matt’s Bring It Home: The Adventure of Finding Yourself after Being Lost in Religion shows how stories and experiences are what connect us most intimately to the Divine, and that in our quest to find God we must first find ourselves. Matt lives with his family in Wisconsin.

David Morris is the author of Lost Faith and Wandering Souls: A Psychology of Disillusionment, Mourning, and the Return of Hope. He is the publisher of Lake Drive Books and a literary agent at Hyponymous Consulting, two innovative ventures working together to specialize in authors and books that help people heal, grow, and discover. David holds a PhD in psychology and religion from Drew University. He lives with his wife in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and they have two daughters. Visit davidrmorris.me.

Scott Okamoto is a writer, musician, podcaster, and storyteller. He’s spent much of his professional career teaching English at a Christian college, witnessing the experience of marginalized people there, which he relays in his podcast Chapel Probation. His Asian American Apostate: Losing Religion and Finding Myself at an Evangelical University tells his unlikely spiritual journey, bringing together an evangelical past, an Asian American experience, with a contemporary world of Christian evangelicalism. He lives in Southern California with his wife and three kids.

Frank Rogers is a professor (Claremont School of Theology), trained spiritual guide, retreat leader, and the author of Practicing Compassion, Compassion in Practice: The Way of Jesus, and The God of Shattered Glass, a novel. He focuses on spirituality that is contemplative, creative, and socially liberative. Rogers’s Cradled in the Arms of Compassion is a spiritual memoir of going from trauma to recovery. He is the cofounder of the Center for Engaged Compassion and lives in Southern California.

Katherine Spearing MA, CTRC is the founder of Tears of Eden, a nonprofit supporting survivors of spiritual abuse, and the host of Tears’ affiliate podcast Uncertain. She also hosts the podcast Trauma & Pop Culture and is a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach working primarily with clients who have survived cults, high-control environments, spiritual abuse, and sexual abuse. Her forthcoming book explains the experience and impact of spiritual abuse, as well as the survivor recovery process.