Join a Festival Lunch Circle
Deepen Your Festival Experience
These small groups—no more than 10 participants each—gather during lunch on both Friday and Saturday to discuss a shared topic of interest. Led by a Festival participant, Lunch Circles create a “smaller” Festival within the larger one, offering space for meaningful conversation, connection, and community. A beloved Festival tradition, Lunch Circles are the perfect way to build relationships while sharing a meal.
Lunch Circles are free to join, but advance sign-up and pre-ordered boxed lunches are required to participate. Space is limited, so please reserve your spot early.
Choose a Lunch Circle and Sign Up
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Deadlines are approached and navigated by all writers at one time or another, either energizing creative efforts or erecting an impenetrable wall of writer’s block. This circle is designed to help writers who must work under pressure to meet target dates, whether in a job situation or completing creative work. Deadlines need not defeat you—used wisely, they can actually help get the work done.
About the Leader: Karen Wells
As a creative writer of fiction, essays, and two blogs, Karen Wells also brings her experience in meeting daily deadlines as a journalist for business publications. Karen holds a Masters degree in journalism from Northwestern University, worked as a freelance magazine writer while raising four daughters, and published a book about solar energy.
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Curious about audiobooks—how they’re made, what choices authors face, and what opportunities exist in this fast-growing format? In this circle, we’ll explore the creative and practical aspects of audiobooks, with perspectives from a producer and a publisher. Whether you’re wondering what it’s like to narrate your own work or how casting decisions are made, you’ll find space to ask questions, share experiences, and connect with others exploring the audiobook world.
About the Leader: Lizzie Goldsmith
Lizzie Goldsmith is a podcast producer, sound designer, writer, and senior roving producer for the City Cast podcast network. She’s worked on podcasts and audiobooks, and, in the fall of 2025, released a full-cast dramatic audio adaptation of Addie Zierman’s memoir When We Were on Fire, which tells Addie’s story of growing up “on fire” for God in the evangelical fervor of the ‘90s, and what happened when that fire burned out.
About the Leader: Miranda Gardner
Miranda Gardner spent many years acquiring and editing books before moving to an executive editor position and then author relations for a top audiobook publisher. Miranda’s day job is production manager of a mystery/thriller imprint and an imprint that publishes bestselling authors and celebrities. She runs Bracket Publishing with creative director/author Heather Dean Brewer.
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Writing is a calling but is often not our only source of income. Often, writers view their "day jobs" as an obstacle—or at least as irrelevant—to the writing life, but what if we learned to embrace our other spheres of work as integral to how we are being formed as writers? We will discuss a "co-vocational" approach to our writing and explore how our other responsibilities enrich and strengthen our ministry as writers.
About the Leader: Hannah Miller King
Hannah Miller King is a priest and writer in the Anglican tradition. She has been a parish pastor, a campus minister to conservatory musicians, and an apartment minister in an urban high-rise. She currently serves as associate rector at The Vine Anglican Church in North Carolina. She is also a contributing writer for Christianity Today and the author of Feasting on Hope: How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness (IVP, 2026). -
Rilke once said that “a good poem comes from having been in danger.” If that is true, does it follow that a poet must take certain risks to mature in their vocation? This circle invites emerging poets to consider what risks they feel the Spirit compelling them to take. While no two paths are the same, this group will connect pilgrim-poets who are discerning their next steps as artists of faith.
About the Leader: Alfonso “Sito” Sasieta
Alfonso “Sito” Sasieta is a Peruvian-American dancer, community builder, and poet. Sito is a principal dancer for the Cuban dance company DC Casineros, and he is also the Outreach Coordinator for L’Arche Greater Washington DC—a community of faith where people with and without intellectual disabilities share their lives. His poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in Image, The Christian Century, Sojourners, America Media and elsewhere.
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The existence of religion is a near-universal trait of human cultures on Earth, yet (with a few noteworthy exceptions) science fiction rarely explores it. Faith is a core component of how many humans relate to the universe. How can emerging technology and sci-fi tropes inform and be informed by the divine?
About the Leader: Jonathan James
Jon James has a million hobbies and writing is one of them. Accordingly, he doesn’t spend long in one particular genre, or even form. He likes weird stuff, which you will probably quickly figure out if you read anything he has written. He is the Editor in Chief of Incensepunk Magazine, where some of his fiction and essays have appeared.About the Leader: Alexander Pyles
Alexander Pyles is a writer, editor, and critic based out of the Chicagoland area. An east coast transplant, his chapbook Milo, is part of the Forward Indie award winning series Futures published by Radix Co-op. His nonfiction has appeared in the Chicago Review of Books, Analog Magazine, Fare Forward Magazine, Auxiliary Review of Books, On the Seawall and various other places. -
Join fellow readers for a rich conversation about two powerful novels: Ariel Lawhon’s The Frozen River and Ayana Mathis’s The Unsettled. Together, we’ll consider the ways these stories grapple with questions of justice, belonging, and the search for hope in turbulent times. Bring your insights for a lively exchange on fiction’s power to illuminate human experience.
About the Leader:
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Building a platform is every writer’s biggest fear—and greatest opportunity. What if we flipped the script on scarcity to start seeing community-building as our chance to connect with the very readers we want? Drawing from her experience of growing vibrant platforms on Substack and social media, Laura will lead a lively conversation about how to prayerfully and positively approach the platforms every publisher tells us we need. This circle is for anyone who feels anxious about their own platform (or lack thereof) and wants fresh ways to think about creating a community that cares—for your writing and the world you want to help build as a writer.
About the Leader: Laura Kelly Fanucci
Laura Kelly Fanucci is an author, speaker, and founder of Mothering Spirit, an online community on parenting and spirituality. She has authored seven books including Everyday Sacrament: The Messy Grace of Parenting. Laura’s writing has been featured on the BBC, NPR, and On Being. She writes on Substack (The Holy Labor) and Instagram (@thismessygrace). Her latest book is Living Easter (Ave Maria Press, 2026), and she is finishing a theological memoir about cancer and nature. -
Our world gives us plenty of reasons to feel anxious—climate change, political unrest, even divisions within the church. And yet, Jesus repeatedly tells his followers, “Do not be afraid.” Instead, he calls us to live as people of peace, love, and joy. What does it look like to be hope-bearers in an anxious world? In this session, we’ll explore our unique callings as writers, consider how to lean faithfully into the suffering around us, and challenge one another to shine light into the darkness.
About the Leader: Sarah Wells
Poet and essayist Sarah M. Wells is the author of seven books, most recently To Say One Million Times, WOW. She is a full-time freelance writer, editor, and regular contributor to God Hears Her, a blog for women from Our Daily Bread. Wells also serves as the poetry editor for Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith. -
Together we will explore the genre of memoir and the current publishing landscape, discussing how weaving our own stories with larger narratives (i.e. from Scripture, nature, theology, pop culture, sociology, etc.) can both broaden and ground them. While memoir can be hard to market unless you’re Prince Harry or Beyoncé, the right personal stories, when used to illustrate and support larger truths, can be powerful, engaging, and compelling to readers and publishers alike.
About the Leader: Courtney Ellis
Courtney Ellis is a pastor at Presbyterian Church of the Master as well as the author of six books, most recently Weathering Change: Seeking Peace Amid Life’s Tough Transitions (IVP). She hosts “The Thing with Feathers Podcast,” all about birds and hope, and is an avid birder. Courtney lives with her husband and their three children in Southern California. -
What happens when the lands we love are lost to distance or time? And how does this loss or change mirror the architecture of the heart? This circle will explore landscape as both an exterior and interior place that can be found, lost, and found again. We will look for inspiration from poets like William Stafford, Meena Alexander, and Christian Wiman, who reminds us that “a poetry of place almost always means a poetry of missing places.”
About the Leader: Aaron Brown
Aaron Brown is the author most recently of Call Me Exile (SFASU Press 2022) and Less Than What You Once Were (Unsolicited Press 2022). He has published work in Image, World LiteratureToday, Tupelo Quarterly, Waxwing, and Transition, among others. Brown grew up in Chad and now lives in Texas, where he is an associate professor of English at LeTourneau University. -
While spiritual deconstruction remains a reigning topic in faith-informed reading and writing circles, many are turning their eyes to what they hope will come next: a reconstructed faith. As readers, what are the marks of authenticity that resonate with us when we read someone's journey through spiritual crisis to renewed faith? As writers, is it dishonest or presumptuous to try to write our way through doubt, or is it an act of hope—of defiant faith? How is the writing process itself like the journey to hard-won, reconstructed faith?
About the Leader: Elizabeth Hansen
Elizabeth Hansen is a writer and editor whose feature writing, essays and spiritual meditations have appeared in Our Sunday Visitor, Magnificat, Plough, Fare Forward, Dappled Things and more. She lives in mid-Michigan with her husband and four children, and, to be honest, she’s hosting this circle because the questions it asks nag her every single day, and she’s hungry to engage with others who ponder them too. -
Whether you’ve been writing about spirituality on Substack for years or are curious about sharing your work on this platform for the first time, your questions and insights are welcome here! In this circle, we will discuss what is working for spirituality writers on Substack, brainstorm creative solutions to challenges we are facing, and contemplate how we can integrate our personal spiritualities with our online presence. Let’s have a meaningful conversation in person that can spark supportive online friendships when we get home!
About the Leader: Catherine Anne Sullivan
Catherine Anne Sullivan is a reader, writer, and teacher. After earning a master’s degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame, she spent nearly a decade teaching religion and literature to high school students. She now spends her time caring for her young family and writing about spirituality and imagination on Substack in her newsletter called Wonder & Awe. -
In our death-avoidant culture, what does it mean to be death-positive? Is there such a thing as a good death? Is reading, talking about, or planning for death morbid, or something else? This Circle is for any mortal interested in moving past Midwest-nice avoidance of death into a more hospitable engagement with our shared reality as temporary beings.
About the Leader: Bethany Joy Winn
Rev. Bethany Joy Winn, MDiv, serves West Michigan as a full-time Hospice and Palliative Care Chaplain. She considers it a beautiful privilege to accompany our neighbors on their end-of-life journeys, and believes a more honest relationship with mortality is the greatest teacher of existential peace. When she's not curled up with a book and her cats, she's probably at choir rehearsal, lying in the dirt of her pollinator garden, crafting, or joyfully meandering through cemeteries. -
This circle is for all those who love reading spiritual memoirs. We'll talk about the memoirs we love (and why!) and generate a reading list together so we all have new books in our TBR piles. We'll also talk about craft in ways that will be useful to those who are writing memoirs. What compels us to keep (or stop) reading? What do good memoirs have in common? How do the best memoirs invite us to ask questions about our own faith?
About the Leader: Kaethe Schwehn
Kaethe Schwehn’s memoir, Tailings (Cascade, 2014), winner of the Minnesota Book Award for creative nonfiction, details a year she spent living at Holden Village, an intentional Christian community. Her first novel, The Rending and the Nest (Bloomsbury, 2018) tackles motherhood and faith in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The Gospel of Salome (Wildhouse, 2025) is biblical historical fiction with some rather revolutionary twists. She currently teaches composition and creative writing at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. -
This circle is a gathering space for artist-educators (high school, college, or graduate level) who are looking for support, encouragement, and the exchange of ideas as we navigate the dual callings of writing and teaching. We’ll share experiences, swap practices, and reflect on the challenges and joys of balancing the classroom with our own creative work. Above all, this is a space to build community and remind one another why both teaching and writing matter.
About the Leader: Rebecca Fox
Rebecca Fox is a Midwest-based writer, storyteller, and teacher. Her fiction explores the intersections of life, faith, doubt, and wonder, all flavored with a dash of magic. She holds a BA from Wheaton College and an MFA in Fiction from the University of Central Florida. She now serves as Assistant Professor of English at the University of Northwestern – St. Paul. -
How does setting shape our imaginations and influence our writing? How do our interactions with physical landscapes—both familiar and novel—provide language for the deeper stories of our souls? This circle will focus on writing and reading that evokes a strong sense of place. We will discuss how the beauty of specificity translates into a universal appreciation for home, and how reading and writing with an eye toward setting allows us to attend to our outer and inner landscapes more closely.
About the Leader: Jenna Brack
Jenna Brack is the author of Pass-Through Place (Meadowlark Press, forthcoming), a collection of essays shaped by growing up in central Kansas. Her essays and poetry have been featured in Every Day Poems, Coffee + Crumbs, Fathom, The Sunlight Press, and others. A former educator and college instructor, Jenna now encourages other writers through editing and coaching. She holds an MA in English from Kansas State University and currently lives with her family in Germany.About the Leader: Adrienne Garrison
Adrienne is a writer, educator, and podcaster based in Bloomington, Indiana. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University and has since shared her work in You’re In Good Company (Zondervan, 2026), Literary Mama, and LETTERS Journal from Yale Divinity School. When she’s not writing, Adrienne co-hosts the Exhale Creativity podcast and loves mentoring young writers in her community.
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We usually don't realize when ableism has seeped into our writing, whether it is using words we didn't realize are hurtful or when our bias taints the way we write about disabled characters. We will learn together about what ableism is, where it shows up in our reading and writing, and strategies to avoid it. Writers of all kinds are welcome!
About the Leader: Lindsay Wieland Capel
Lindsay Wieland Capel, LMSW provides online mental health therapy and disability consulting with organizations through her business Every Body Therapy and Consulting. Previously Lindsay worked as a disability consultant for the Christian Reformed Church in North America and as a referral relations coordinator for Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services. Lindsay's faith and her values as a social worker combine to make her a fierce advocate for belonging in all of its forms.About the Leader: Terry DeYoung
Rev. Terry DeYoung is a minister in the Reformed Church in America who served as a pastor, magazine editor, and denominational staff member in Disability Concerns until his retirement in 2023. He is a longtime disability advocate and current president of the Disability Network Lakeshore board of directors. Terry has a rare, congenital bone condition that is part of the dwarfism family. He's married to Cindi Veldheer DeYoung, a healthcare chaplain who lives with significant hearing loss. -
This circle is for authors of Christian children’s and young adult fiction/fantasy who want to write faith into their stories. We will discuss what it means to write a good children’s story and how archetypes, magic systems, and allegorical principles can aid in writing about faith. We will discuss hot button issues about the role of faith in children’s fiction and fantasy, as well as authors that we believe have done this well (and how they did so). Finally, we will discuss our own projects as they apply to the topic and how faith has challenged or furthered our writing processes.
About the Leader: Evelyn Griffith
Evelyn Griffith is an emerging author writing from Norfolk, Virginia where she is pursuing her MFA in fiction at Old Dominion University. She is currently writing a Middle Grade Fantasy Novel. When she's not writing, Evelyn is the managing editor of ODU’s literary magazine, the Barely South Review. In her spare time, she enjoys singing, running, and reading! -
Every writer is shaped by the shadows in their own life stories. This circle will offer writers of all genres the opportunity to explore in community how to invite those shadows to each step of their writing process, confront the falsehoods those shadows may tell writers about the writer’s work, and create generative work that brings truth, clarity, and the light of hard-won insight to readers.
About the Leader: Michelle Van Loon
Since coming to faith in Christ at the tail end of the Jesus Movement, Michelle Van Loon’s Jewish heritage, spiritual hunger, and storyteller’s sensibilities have informed her writing. She is the author of eight books, including Downsizing: Letting Go of Evangelicalism's Nonessentials (Eerdmans, 2025) and Translating Your Past: Finding Meaning in Family Ancestry, Genetic Clues, and Generational Trauma (Herald Press, 2022). Michelle has written for a variety of outlets including Christianity Today, Plough.com, and In Touch ministries. -
Gather with fellow readers to explore the intersections of faith, ecology, and community care. Together, we’ll discuss Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry and Kyle Meyaard-Schaap’s Following Jesus in a Warming World, two books that invite us to imagine more just and sustainable ways of living. Bring your questions and your curiosity for a lively conversation about how stories can shape our response to creation in a time of climate crisis.
About the Leader:
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Take a break from the busy Festival schedule to reflect, share, and connect with fellow attendees. In this Circle, we’ll swap highlights, insights, and takeaways from the sessions we’ve experienced so far. Come ready for conversation that deepens the Festival’s themes and sparks new connections.
About the Leader: Scott Hoezee
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This circle is designed for those who have self-published or who are exploring the possibility of self-publishing. While in the past publishing your own work was regarded by some as something of an embarrassment, today that is no longer the case, and there are many reasons self-publishing is worth the effort and expense. This group will explore the pros and cons of making the decision to self-publish.
About the Leader: Rebecca Spencer McCurdy
After retiring from 30 years of serving as a Hospice Manager of Volunteer Services at Ohio's Hospice LifeCare, Rebecca Spencer McCurdy self-published a novel, Gracious Living, about a hospice patient and her volunteer, as well as a non-fiction guide to supporting those we love at the end of life. -
Whether we're full-time or aspiring writers, how do we actually get the work done? In this circle, we'll share the time management tricks that work for us (and some that don't) and hopefully pick up some new ideas and tools to create the habits that help us get those words on the page.
About the Leader: Leslie Verner
Leslie Verner lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her husband, three kids, four hamsters, a bunch of imaginary friends, and too many canines. She has a decade of teaching experience and boards dogs in her home while she is finishing her MFA in creative writing from Lindenwood University. She is the author of Invited: The Power of Hospitality in an Age of Loneliness (Herald Press) and many other essays and articles and is also working on a novel. As much as she wants to prioritize writing, she often finds herself doing everything but writing. For example, she has taken up woodworking. And quilting. And fly fishing ... -
There's no doubt that writing is hard work, but it can be deep play at the same time. We'll talk about how we can keep the joy of writing during the inevitable challenges and come out with our love of writing and our subject alive.
About the Leader: Katy Bowser Hutson
Katy Bowser Hutson co-authored Little Prayers for Ordinary Days, a children's prayer book (IVP Kids), and Now I Lay Me Down to Fight (IVP), a book of poetry and essays from her time with cancer. Her current work, Play Book, a highly illustrated exploration of play and the playfulness of God, is forthcoming in 2027 with Rabbit Room Press. -
The practice of medicine is filled with stories, and as healthcare professionals we carry both the weight and privilege of bearing witness to these stories. In this circle, we’ll gather as multidisciplinary practitioners who also call ourselves writers. We will explore the ways narrative can illuminate our practice and offer us a means of making sense of the complex encounters that shape our daily work.
This circle is open to all writers who have a background in healthcare: nurses, occupational therapists, chaplains, or anesthesiologists. It is also open to all styles of writing, whether you write essays, poetry, or journaling.About the Leader: Katherine (Kate) Gaston
Kate Gaston is a licensed Physician Assistant who spent most of her adult years working at a Level 1 Trauma and Burn ICU. Now, however, she is living the life of a paid writer after being commissioned by The Rabbit Room (a Faith+Arts community) to write a monthly column on hospitality, community, and relationship-building. -
Platform, especially social media platform, has proven to be an inconsistent predictor of an author's success, and yet Christian agents, editors, and publishers continue to rely on it when determining who gets book deals. Come discuss the practical steps writers, agents, and editors can take to chart a new path forward that values the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in Christian nonfiction writing, and teaches the market to value it too.
About the Leader: Tabitha McDuffee
Tabitha McDuffee is the digital marketing manager for an independent Christian publisher whose history reaches back over 130 years. She also holds a double BA in Biblical Studies and Applied Linguistics with a minor in Biblical Languages from Moody Bible Institute and an MA in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies from the University of London. Her award-winning writing has been featured in Christianity Today, Fathom Magazine, and Mockingbird Magazine. -
In a culture that prizes platform, visibility, and constant productivity, the writing life can sometimes feel like a hustle toward “bigness.” But what if smallness is not a failure, but a spiritual practice? Drawing from Mennonite tradition, homesteading, and contemplative spirituality, this circle will explore how small-scale living and small-scale writing can cultivate attentiveness, authenticity, and creative freedom. Together, we’ll reflect on how choosing “small” can open us to deeper connection—to God, to the world around us, and to our words.
About the Leader: Michelle Webster-Hein
Michelle Webster-Hein's debut novel Out of Esau was published October 2022 by Counterpoint Press. Her work has been recognized in the Best American series, nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, and published in Modern Farmer, Ruminate Magazine, River Teeth, and Hunger Mountain, among other places. She curates a writing series titled “Almanac of Small Experiments,” and she and her family farm a small homestead in the southern Michigan countryside where she was born and raised. -
Do you feel intimidated by the submission process? Maybe you’d like to land your first publication in a literary journal but don’t know where to start, or maybe you’ve been submitting for years yet publication still feels out of reach. In this circle, we’ll discuss our collective insight into submitting to literary journals and magazines, sharing strategies and tips for submitting and, ultimately, landing that byline. Whether you’re new to submitting your work for publication or have been at it for years, this circle is for anyone looking for a hearty dose of encouragement to click that submit button.
About the Leader: Elizabeth Hamilton
Elizabeth Hamilton is a writer from Texas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Carve Magazine, the Dallas Museum of Art, The Hudson Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Texas Monthly, among other publications. In 2024, she was a Writers’ League of Texas fellow. Elizabeth has an MFA in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University. She hosts the Substack This Book Could Save Your Life, about books, illness, and the contemplative life. -
The Bible’s message is told in assorted genres— history, genealogy, prophecy, exposition, epistle. How can we make use of its various techniques in our own writing? In this circle, we will discuss some of the literary structures found within the Bible and the ways in which Biblical structures can focus and enhance our own writing. We’ll also examine passages from the Bible through the lens of literary appreciation.
About the Leader: Diane Glancy
Diane Glancy is a long-time writer and teacher of writing. A professor emerita at Macalester College, she also taught writing at Kenyon College and Azusa Pacific University and served as a mentor in the MFA low-residency program at Carlow University. Recently, she taught Experimental Prose and Poetry at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Glancy received the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from The Conference on Christianity and Literature. -
The natural world offers endless metaphors and insights for cultivating a well-rooted creative life. In this circle, we’ll explore the inspiration for living we glean from the natural world, and we’ll discuss how living with the seasons can help us sustain our writing and creative practice.
About the Leader: Bethaney Wilkinson
Bethaney Wilkinson is a writer, facilitator, and spiritual director rooted in rural Middle Georgia where she lives with her husband Alex and their two dogs, Isla and Bear. She has an M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary and a B.A. in Educational Studies from Emory University. She is author of The Diversity Gap: Where Good Intentions Meet True Cultural Change and A More Beautiful Way to Live: Nine Practices to Unlearn Habits of Anxiety, Fear, and Urgency. -
In this circle, we will explore benefits and insights of participating in writing communities, why they are essential in the writing life, and how they can be formed and sustained. We’ll frame the concept of “writing community” as the pursuit of koinonia (fellowship) and discuss what we can gain from participating in these communities. We’ll reflect on some of the fruits of writing in community, such as mentorship, empathy, feedback, and belonging, as well as practices that might create the conditions for our communities to flourish.
About the Leader: Nicole Guinot Varty
Nicole Guinot Varty is a writer, wife, mother, and professor of teaching at Wayne State University. Her interest in student support, linguistic justice, and ecological models of writing have led her to research and assess learning communities and their effectiveness. Her work appears in Composition Studies, Intersections, Language Arts Journal of Michigan, Across the Disciplines, and JETHE. She’s a writing group facilitator, gardener on the weekends, family movie night aficionado, and not that kind of doctor.