Beyond Belief (40 page)

K
YRIA
A
BRAHAMS
is the author of
I’m Perfect, You’re Doomed: Tales of a Jehovah’s Witness Upbringing
(Touchstone, 2009). She writes a weekly column for
Street Carnage
, most notably “The Myth of Hipster Racism,” which landed her an interview on NPR. She makes a lot of YouTube videos in characters that people think are real.
Gawker
once called her an “angry neocon.” She is neither angry nor conservative, but is often misunderstood. She lives in Queens with her artsy husband, Marcus, and a dog and cat who actually seem to like each other. She’s currently trying her hand at photography.

H
UDA
A
L
-M
ARASHI
is an Iraqi American at work on a memoir about the impact on her marriage of her dual-identity. Excerpts
from this memoir have appeared in the anthologies
Love Inshallah: The Secret Love Lives of Muslim American Women, Becoming: What Makes a Woman,
and
In Her Place.
She is the recipient of a 2012 Creative Workforce Fellowship, a program of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, made possible by the generous support of Cuyahoga County citizens through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.

Y
OLANDE
B
RENER
is an English writer living in New York. She is the author of the memoir
Holy Candy
. She has worked as an actress, a filmmaker, a singer in an all-girl band, and a disciple of an alleged Messiah. Her essays have been published in
New York Press, Nerve,
and
Strange Angels
, and her film scripts have been funded by the British Film Institute and the Arts Council of Great Britain. She won the 2010 NYC Department of Parks & Recreation Poems in the Park competition. Currently Yolande works as a teleprompter operator and plays at training in pole fitness. She believes that all religions contain wisdom and is grateful to the Unification Church for teaching her to see all things as holy.

C
AROLYN
B
RIGGS
holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas. Her 2002 book,
This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost
(Bloomsbury USA), was reissued in 2011 as
Higher Ground: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost
(Rowman & Littlefield) to coincide with the release of the film adaptation,
Higher Ground
(Sony Pictures Classics), for which she also wrote the screenplay. She currently writes for
Religion Dispatches
and has begun a new screenplay exploring one woman’s journey into Eastern mysticism. Carolyn is an associate professor of English at Marshalltown Community College in Iowa.

C
AITLIN
C
ONSTANTINE
is a journalist, blogger, and writer whose work has appeared in
Bitch, Creative Loafing
, and
The Huffington Post
. She is working on a memoir based on her much-loved zine,
I Was a Teenage Mormon
. When Caitlin isn’t writing, she’s training for marathons and duathlons. She lives in Clearwater, Florida, with her husband, greyhound, and two cats.

E
LISE
B
RIANNE
C
URTIN
is a writer and editor who hardly lets a day go by without putting pen to paper and fingertips to keyboard. After spending six years of her young adult life as a hardcore devotee of the International Church of Christ in Staten Island, New York, she walked away from her member-owned marriage and churchly obligations to rediscover the authentic voice within. She now finds her sanity in artistic expression, as a writer, and as a bluesy soul-folk song-stress. She recently set foot on a new path of sharing her passion for inner artistry in a variety of healing workshops geared toward women. Though far from her original home, she’s happily nesting these days with her best friend and loverman in Bellingham, Washington.

S
TEPHANIE
D
URDEN
E
DWARDS
knew since she was in second grade that her mission in life was to become a writer. Today, she lives that dream as a small-town journalist, freelance writer, and aspiring novella author. She shares her home in West Central Missouri with her husband, three growing children, a stubborn horse, and a loud beagle. Stephanie spent the majority of her adulthood as a devout and active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints until her faith was shaken in late 2006. Within months, her beliefs came full circle, beginning a paradigm shift that changed her life forever. Taking the journey a day at a time, Stephanie continues to rebuild and redefine her life. She finds peace in long walks
along country roads near her home. She is convinced that happiness can be found at the bottom of a steaming cup of good coffee sitting alongside her husband and best friend of twenty years.

E
LISE
G
LASSMAN
lives and works in Seattle. She studied fiction writing with Laura Kalpakian and others at the University of Washington Extension, and with Marilynne Robinson at the Iowa Summer Writers’ Workshop. Her work has appeared in
Colorado Review, Neon Beam, The Summerset Review, Main Street Rag, The Portland Review, Tawdry Bawdry,
and
Switchback
. Her story “The Shabiby Express” was a Top-10 Finalist in the Dylan Days Creative Writing Contest.

L
UCIA
G
REENHOUSE
is author of
fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science
, published by Crown in August 2011.
fathermothergod
was recommended by such publications as
O, The Oprah Magazine
;
Marie Claire
magazine; and
The Atlantic
. Lucia lives with her husband, four children, and dog in Westchester County, New York. She is a graduate of Emma Willard School and Brown University. She is a big fan of the Writing Center at Sarah Lawrence College.

C
OLLEEN
H
AGGERTY
is a writer of personal essays, with stories published in
The Spirit of a Woman: Stories to Empower and Inspire
(Santa Monica Press),
He Said What?: Women Write About Moments When Everything Changed
(Seal Press), and
Dancing at the Shame Prom: Sharing the Stories That Kept Us Small
(Seal Press). She is currently working on a memoir about being a disabled mother. You can read about her journey as she walks through life as an amputee at
www.mymilewalk.com
.

P
AMELA
H
ELBERG
is something of an expert at living two lives: fundamentalist Christian/closeted lesbian; Catholic school employee/mostly out lesbian; writer/computer geek; lesbian mom in the not-so-gay nineties. She received her MA in Creative Writing from Western Washington University where she studied under award-winning novelist Laura Kalpakian. Pam founded and operated Fremont Place Books in Seattle and taught English composition for many years at Whatcom Community College, before succumbing to her inner geek and launching a career in IT. Pam currently works in IT by day, writes whenever she can, and is at work on her memoir. She lives with her partner, Nancy, in Bellingham, Washington, where she works at making her life more congruent. She blogs on a variety of topics at
www.pmbgp.blogspot.com
.

M
ELANIE
H
OFFERT
grew up on a farm near Wyndmere, North Dakota, where she spent her childhood meandering gravel roads, listening to farmers at church potlucks, and daydreaming about impossible love. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University, where she was awarded the 2008 Outstanding Nonfiction Thesis Award. Her work has appeared in several literary journals. She received the 2005 Creative Nonfiction Award from
Baltimore Review
and the 2010 Creative Nonfiction Award from
New Millennium Writings
. Her memoir,
Prairie Silence
(Beacon Press), is forthcoming in 2013. Melanie lives in Minneapolis where—on a daily basis—she plots her escape from all actions that do not feed her soul.

D
ONNA
M. J
OHNSON
is the author of
Holy Ghost Girl
, a critically acclaimed memoir awarded a 2011 Books for Better Life Award and the Mayborn Creative Nonfiction Prize for a manuscript-in-progress.
Donna has written about religion, family, and culture for
Huffington Post
, the
Psychology Today
blog,
The Dallas Morning News, The Austin American-Statesman, Austin Monthly
, and other publications. She lives in Austin with her husband, poet and author Kirk Wilson.

M
ARY
J
OHNSON
is the author of
An Unquenchable Thirst
, named one of the best memoirs of 2011 by
Kirkus Reviews
. At age nineteen, Mary joined the Missionaries of Charity, also known as the Sisters of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. During her twenty years as a sister, she spent fifteen of those in Rome, where she lived and worked with Mother Teresa. After leaving the sisters in 1997, she completed a BA in English at Lamar University and an MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College. Mary’s work has been widely featured in
O, The Oprah Magazine;
Salon.com
; The Washington Post; Poets & Writers
;
Bloomberg View; Los Angeles Times
; National Public Radio; and
The Rosie Show
, among others. She currently serves as Creative Director of Retreats for A Room of Her Own Foundation.

L
EILA
K
HAN
(pen name) was born in Pakistan and lived in various countries in Asia and Europe before settling in the United States at the age of eleven. A lawyer by training and profession, her writing has largely been academic, in the form of book reviews, law review comments, and chapters in books. A few years ago, she joined a writing group and started writing about her life experience of searching for belonging as a Pakistani Muslim woman who spent most of her life in the West. Her story “Rerouting” was recently published in the anthology
Love Insh’Allah: The Secret Love Lives of Muslim Women in America
. She lives in Northern California with her husband and daughter.

L
EAH
L
AX
holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston. She has published prose, poetry, award-winning fiction, memoir, essays, and the libretto for a major opera and produced a world-traveling exhibit. She is currently working on a memoir of her thirty years among the Hassidim as a covered woman and a closeted lesbian, an excerpt of which appears in this book. Another excerpt was included in the 2010 anthology
Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Lives
. Her book
Not from Here: New Houstonians and Their Journeys
will be published by Bright Sky Press in 2013. Leah lives in Texas with her partner and their Airedale, Maggie.

G
RACE
P
ETERSON
is a writer and blogger. She has published in several anthologies and blogs about the writing craft and recovery topics. She is working on a memoir that goes into much more detail about her experience with Brock, including the events that led up to it and her recovery process out of it. She is also an avid gardener. When the weather is unsuitable for weed pulling, she can be found in front of her laptop, working on her garden column, her garden blog, or her forthcoming garden book.

J
OSHUNDA
V
ICTORIA
S
ANDERS
is a writer, journalist, and poet. Her writing has appeared in
San Francisco Chronicle, Publishers Weekly, The Texas Observer, The Dallas Morning News, Bitch
magazine, and many other publications. Her work has been widely anthologized in Seal Press anthologies like
Secrets and Confidences: The Complicated Truth About Women’s Friendships, Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists
, and
Madonna and Me
. She lives with her adorable dog, Cleo, in Austin, Texas, and is working on her first book. She blogs at
www.thesingleladies.wordpress.com
and
www.jvictoriasanders.com
.

E
RIN
S
EAWARD
-H
IATT
is a writer, editor, and designer who left small-town Illinois at seventeen for an elite Latter-day Saint education in the reddest of red states. After earning an English degree, she began her career as an enthusiastic but underpaid editor for a Christian press and fell in love with liberalism after a lefty novel slipped through the cracks and ended up on her desk. Erin edited a stack of books and wrote a handful of articles before landing face-first in graphic design, which consumes most of her life. Her artwork has gained prominence at national conventions and delights mixed-media artists and paper crafters worldwide. Erin spent ten years as a devout woman of faith before taking the leap into agnosticism. In her rare free time, she wrestles with a decorating scheme based on floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and periodically cruises the Western landscape with her filmmaker husband.

J
ULIA
S
CHEERES
is the
The New York Times
best-selling author of
Jesus Land
, a memoir, and
A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown
. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband and children.

N
IKKI
S
MITH
has always been an initiator—from starting the first health-education program on the island of Guam to developing recruitment, retention, and student affairs departments for universities to being an assistant professor in public health. She has written for academic publications, held public office, and lectured for both local and national educational organizations. Her positions within the Seventh-day Adventist Church included Sabbath School teacher, elementary church school instructor, Loma Linda University professor, and missionary in both South Korea and Guam. She now resides in Southern California with her husband and is working on a memoir.