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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 22, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 17
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, wh...
Apr 15, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 16
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Apr 08, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 15
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 , T he Story of God the King, and The Story of God Our Savio r . In this episode, Kenneth and Shay and Jonathan Rogers talk about visual storytelling, Biblical theology (as distinct from systematic theology), mountains, and alligators. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/...
Apr 01, 2024•47 min•Season 6Ep. 14
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 ho...
Mar 25, 2024•36 min•Season 6Ep. 13
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.” Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/m...
Mar 18, 2024•44 min•Season 6Ep. 12
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 ...
Mar 11, 2024•54 min•Season 6Ep. 11
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...
Mar 04, 2024•42 min•Season 6Ep. 10
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 . Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Feb 26, 2024•45 min•Season 6Ep. 9
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/...
Feb 19, 2024•43 min•Season 6Ep. 8
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Feb 12, 2024•43 min•Season 6Ep. 7
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.giving...
Feb 05, 2024•43 min•Season 6Ep. 6
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 fi...
Jan 29, 2024•46 min•Season 6Ep. 5
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 Puddl...
Jan 22, 2024•45 min•Season 6Ep. 4
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for ...
Jan 15, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 3
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informat...
Jan 08, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 2
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Jan 02, 2024•47 min•Season 6Ep. 1
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Dec 11, 2023•34 min•Season 5Ep. 49
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 . Bes...
Dec 04, 2023•45 min•Season 5Ep. 48
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/mem...
Nov 27, 2023•47 min•Season 5Ep. 47
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Nov 20, 2023•40 min•Season 5Ep. 46
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 . Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Nov 13, 2023•44 min•Season 5Ep. 45
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Nov 05, 2023•47 min•Season 5Ep. 44
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 ...
Oct 30, 2023•42 min•Season 5Ep. 43
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, T his Homeward Ache: How Our Yearning for the Life to Come Spurs on Our Life Toda...
Oct 23, 2023•46 min•Season 5Ep. 42
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 na...
Oct 16, 2023•44 min•Season 5Ep. 41
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informa...
Oct 09, 2023•41 min•Season 5Ep. 40
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. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Oct 02, 2023•37 min•Season 5Ep. 39
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 ...
Sep 25, 2023•44 min•Season 5Ep. 38
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. Suppo...
Sep 18, 2023•46 min•Season 5Ep. 37
