Fred Bahnson is an award-winning writer and author of Soil & Sacrament (Simon & Schuster). “This book is profoundly, beautifully down to earth,” wrote Bill McKibben, “which is almost certainly where we all need to spend more time on a planet in crisis.” Bahnson’s essays and journalism have appeared in Harper’s, Oxford American, Orion, Notre Dame Magazine, Emergence, Image, The Sun, and Best American Spiritual Writing. His essay “On the Road with Thomas Merton” won a Wilbur Award for Best Magazine Article from the Religion Communicators Council and was selected by nature writer Robert MacFarlane for the anthology Best American Travel Writing 2020.
Bahnson’s writing awards include a Pilgrimage Essay Award, a W.K. Kellogg Food & Society Policy fellowship, and a North Carolina Artist fellowship in creative nonfiction from the NC Arts Council. He has given keynotes at places like Yale, Duke, Georgetown, TEDx Manhattan’s “Changing the Way We Eat,” and most recently at the 2019 Halki Summit in Istanbul, where he spoke on faith and climate change for an international gathering of environmental leaders convened by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. In 2012, Fred became founding director of the Food, Health, and Ecological Well-being Program, a national leadership development program at the Wake Forest University School of Divinity that trains and equips faith leaders, environmental advocates, and contemplative activists. He now lives and writes from his home in southwest Montana.
Essays:
https://emergencemagazine.org/feature/on-the-road-with-thomas-merton/
https://harpers.org/archive/2021/01/the-gate-of-heaven-is-everywhere-contemplative-christianity/
Interview:
https://www.spiritualityhealth.com/articles/2018/06/27/how-an-earthier-christianity-might-save-us
Book: Soil & Sacrament
