Spirituality, Faith and Belief
 | Connie May Fowler
Bestselling Author │ Novelist │ Memoirist
Set in the lush landscape of her native South, Fowler’s gritty fiction (The Problem with Murmer Lee, Before Women Had Wings) examines the conflict between traditional and contemporary cultures and how people navigate difficult relationships. Fowler is also the author of the bestselling memoir When Katie Wakes, and her novel Before Women Had Wings was purchased by Oprah Winfrey and made into an Emmy Award-winning movie. She has been a professor of creative writing, and her essays have appeared in the New York Times, the London Times, the International Herald Tribune, and elsewhere. Her latest novel, How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly, is “a huge-hearted, ebullient novel,” populated with “an exuberant cast of unruly characters”.
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 | Elizabeth Gilbert
Bestselling Author │ Short Story Writer │ Memoirist
Annie Proulx has called her “a writer of incandescent talent.” The author of 2006's runaway bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert is unquestionably one of her generation's most beloved memoirists. Eat, Pray, Love, which has sold more than ten million copies worldwide, is Gilbert's memoir of soul-searching and international exploration in the wake of her devastating divorce. Gilbert is a distinguished journalist who began her career writing for Harper's Bazaar, Spin, the New York Times Magazine, and GQ. In 2002, her book The Last American Man was a Finalist for the National Book Award. Committed, the deeply satisfying follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love, tells the story of Gilbert's unexpected plunge into second marriage—this time to Felipe, the man with whom she falls in love at the end of Eat, Pray, Love. Part memoir, part meditation on marriage as a sociohistorical institution, Committed is rich with Gilbert's bright, engaging voice and characteristic playful humor. Gilbert recently finished a novel, The Signature of All Things, to be published in the fall of 2013.
Selected Books: The Last American Man, Eat Pray Love, Committed
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 | Sue Monk Kidd
Bestselling Author │ Novelist │ Essayist
Novelist and essayist Sue Monk Kidd gained fame with her debut novel, The Secret Life of Bees, a blockbuster bestseller which is considered a modern classic (and which was adapted into a feature film in 2008). She is also the author of The Mermaid Chair and, more recently, an inspiring memoir, Traveling With Pomegranates, which she wrote with her daughter. Ms. Kidd is also highly regarded for her groundbreaking work in the field of feminine spirituality and feminist theology (God’s Joyful Surprise, When the Heart Waits, and Dance of the Dissident Daughter). Her inspirational lectures explore the themes and meanings of her work; the impetus for her stories and characters; “Southern-ness” in literature; and the intersection of writing, creativity, and soul. She is currently at work on her next novel.
Selected Books: The Secret Life of Bees, The Mermaid Chair
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 | Christopher Phillips
Bestselling Author │ Founder, Constitution & Socrates Cafés │ Social Entrepreneur
Christopher Phillips, the New York Times bestselling author of Socrates Café, Six Questions of Socrates, and Socrates in Love, has a passion for inquiry. A foremost specialist in the Socratic Method, he reminds us that we ought to ask questions—as Socrates put it in Plato’s The Republic, “about the way one should live.” Phillips’s inquiries reveal surprising points of intersection between classical philosophy, modern life, and the intellectual richness of diverse societies. Energized by the initial optimism surrounding Obama’s presidency and concerned with the increasingly fierce nature of the partisanship infecting Congress, Phillips’s latest project is Constitution Café, an effort to engage everyday Americans in constructive dialogue and debate about the nature of our government, the meaning of citizenship, and our most important political documents. Phillips has taught at New York University and is the founder and executive director of the Constitution Café and the Society for Philosophical Inquiry (SPI).
–Los Angeles Times
Christopher Phillips has a passion for inquiry. A foremost specialist in the Socratic Method, he reminds us that we ought to ask questions – “not about any chance question,” as Socrates put it in Plato’s Republic, “but about the way one should live.”
Selected Books: Constitution Café, Six Questions of Socrates, Socrates Café.
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 | Krista Tippett
Author │ Radio Show Host │ Journalist
“It’s always been very important to me to enlarge imaginations about how this part of life we call religious and spiritual actually works in real, far-flung, 21st-century lives.”
—Krista Tippett
A noted commentator on religion, ethics, and spirituality, Krista Tippett is the award-winning host of public radio’s Krista Tippett On Being (formerly Speaking of Faith), a weekly radio program carried by more than 200 public radio affiliates across the U.S. Tippett is highly regarded for the insight she brings to interfaith conversations about belief, meaning, ethics, and religion in a climate too often marred by polarization and partisanship. She is the author of Einstein’s God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit and Speaking Of Faith. She is currently working on The Civil Conversations Project and finishing a new book, slated for publication in 2014.
Selected Books: Speaking of Faith, Einstein's God
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