Kaya Oakes is the author of four books, most recently including The Nones Are Alright and Radical Reinvention. Her fifth book, The Defiant Middle, is forthcoming in November of 2021. Her essays and journalism have appeared in The New Republic, Slate, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, America, Commonweal, On Being, National Catholic Reporter, Religion Dispatches, Religion News Service, Sojourners, and many other publications. She teaches nonfiction writing at the University of California, Berkeley. She has appeared on NPR, the CBC, and on many podcasts. She’s spoken and given workshops in spiritual writing and reporting at universities, worship spaces, seminaries and community centers across the United States, and was among a group of international journalists who participated in a two-week workshop at the Vatican in 2016 to study the role of religion writing in politically turbulent times. She was born and raised in Oakland, California, where she still lives.