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

Bonnie Waltch is a producer, director, and writer for documentaries and museum exhibit media. Most recently, she produced and wrote the one-hour international television documentary, Earth Emergency, and series of five short films, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops. Other work includes Super Reefs: The Future of Coral for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and exhibit media for the Pikes Peak Visitor Center, the Tennessee State Museum, the Mob Museum, and the National World War II Museum, among others. She has produced and written television programs for Nova/BBC, Scientific American Frontiers, and Discovery Channel. She also served as Executive Director of Filmmakers Collaborative, a non-profit fiscal sponsor. She holds a B.A. in Semiotics from Brown University.

Jonathan F.P. Rose’s business, public policy, teaching, writing and not-for-profit work focuses on creating more environmentally, socially and economically resilient cities. In 1989, Mr. Rose founded Jonathan Rose Companies LLC, a multi-disciplinary real estate development, planning, project management, and investment firm, to address the challenges of the 21st century. Jonathan has led the firm’s vision, program and growth, developing award winning new projects, investment funds and city plans to model solutions integrating the issues of affordable housing, community development, culture and the environment. The firm is one of the largest acquirers of affordable and mixed income housing in the nation.

He has received the MIT’s Visionary Leadership Award, The Urban Land Institute’s global award for Excellence and many other awards for his work. Mr. Rose’s book on how to create resilient cities, The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life, was published by Harper Wave in 2016, and won the 2017 PROSE Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work by a Trade Publisher. Inspired by the book, Bhutan is now re-planning its capital city, Thimphu as a Well-Tempered City.

Mr. Rose and his wife Diana Calthorpe Rose are the co-founders of the Garrison Institute, serves on its Board and leads its Pathways to Planetary Health program. The Institute connects inner transformation with outer solutions to relieve suffering in the fields of trauma, education and the environment.

Mr. Rose is a Trustee of Enterprise Community Partners and serves on the New York Federal Reserves’ Regional Advisory Board. He is an Honorary Member of the American Institute of Architects and Honorary Trustee of the American Museum of Natural History and Jazz at Lincoln Center.


Mr. Rose graduated from Yale University in 1974 with a B.A. in Psychology and
Philosophy, and received a Masters in Regional Planning from the University of
Pennsylvania in 1980.


Mr. Rose plays bass and blues harp in the Raga/Jazz/ Blues Band Jog Blues.