Writer Bios

We couldn't offer The Well to our readers without the generous contributions of our writers. Read through their bios to learn from their stories and click through for links to the articles they have written. If you are interested in writing for The Well, explore our Writer's Guidelines.

Alison Pichel is a wife and mother of two young children from the Twin Cities area in Minnesota. She works in an elementary school as a reading interventionist. Currently, Alison is pursuing her Master's in Literacy Education from Hamline University. She worships with a beautifully diverse community at Southview Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Alison is especially blessed that her children (usually) sleep through the night, her husband cooks, and Christmas in Minnesota will be snow-covered.

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Anna Plantinga is a doctoral student in biostatistics at the University of Washington. Her research is focused on developing new ways to test whether and how the microbiome, or the community of bacteria living in and on a person, affects health. In her spare time she enjoys playing viola, hiking, and drinking tea.

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Mary Poplin is a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University. She received her PhD from the University of Texas in 1978. After many years of what she calls “searching the spiritual net,” she became a Christian in 1993 and now works to integrate her faith and her work in the university. Her most recent educational research has focused on studying high performing teachers in low performing urban schools. She writes also on the need to merge the imperatives of social justice and accountability in order to decrease the achievement gap between students in different racial and economic groups.

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Kaya works as Biblical Research and Ministry Specialist at Glorify Performing Arts, a non-profit, Christian ballet company in Pennsylvania. She holds an MTS and Certificate in Theology and the Arts from Duke Divinity School. She received her BA from Grinnell College, where she was a student leader in her InterVarsity chapter from 2015 to 2019. Kaya enjoys studying languages, ancient and modern, and dancing incessantly to meditate on theological concepts or to connect with her friends and community.

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Cynthia Prescott

Cynthia Prescott is Professor and Chair of the Department of History and American Indian Studies at the University of North Dakota. Her publications include Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cultural Memory. She seeks to provide context for local debates about controversial monuments through her website, public presentations, editorials, and a classroom role-playing game. She lives in Grand Forks, North Dakota, with her husband, two daughters, and a pandemic puppy.

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Christen Price moved from the Midwest to Washington, DC eleven years ago. Christen is a human rights lawyer who works to influence courts and legislatures toward protecting human dignity and equality for sexual exploitation survivors, through legislative advocacy and litigation, particularly with respect to sex trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse, and pornography. She attends an Anglican Church on Capitol Hill, where she serves on the parish council. She received her JD from Georgetown University Law Center, and a BA in philosophy from Cedarville University.

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Paula Frances Price

Paula Frances Price has worked for Greek InterVarsity in Athens, Georgia, for ten years. She trains sorority and fraternity students to lead Scripture studies in their chapters and helps them figure out how to follow Jesus in college. She and her husband have a one-year-old daughter who keeps them on their toes.

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Karen Swallow Prior

Karen Swallow Prior (PhD, SUNY Buffalo) is the award-winning author of On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. She is a frequent speaker, a monthly columnist at Religion News Service, and has written for Christianity Today, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Vox. She is a contributing editor for Comment, a founding member of the Pelican Project, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, and a senior fellow at the International Alliance for Christian Education. (Photo Credit: Joanna Sue Photography)

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Joy Qualls is an associate professor of communication studies and associate dean of the Division of Communication at Biola University. She is married to Kevin, a licensed professional counselor, and they are parents to two children.

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Dr. Vinoth Ramachandra

Dr. Ramachandra holds both a Bachelor’s and Doctoral degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of London. He is the Secretary for Dialogue and Social Engagement with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), a global partnership of over 150 university-level Christian movements.

Vinoth was the founder General Secretary of Sri Lanka’s Fellowship of Christian University Students (FOCUS) & Regional Secretary for IFES South Asia before transitioning to the senior leadership team of IFES.

Vinoth has also been involved with the Civil Rights Movement in Sri Lanka, as well as with the global Micah Network (a network of development and justice organizations) and A Rocha (a world-wide biodiversity conservation organization). He is also on the International Advisory Council of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, based in Cambridge, England. He is the author of several essays, articles and books including Gods That Fail, Subverting Global Myths: Theology and the Public Issues that Shape Our World, and Church and Mission in the New Asia. Vinoth was married for almost twenty years to his Danish wife Karin, who passed away in 2018.

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Writer. Dancer. Tea Drinker. Idea Wrangler. A happy resident of State College, Pennsylvania, and a graduate student in English and Creative Writing at Bucknell University where she is working on a book about her year in Bulgaria. You can find more of her writing and consulting work at danamray.com.

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Gayle Reed, a former psychiatric nurse, received a PhD from the University of Wisconsin--Madison under graduate advisor Dr. Robert Enright, internationally known leader in research on forgiveness and co-founder of the International Forgiveness Institute. Dr. Reed's own research on forgiveness has demonstrated that a forgiveness recovery program resulted in psychological benefits for women with a history of spousal psychological abuse and childhood sexual abuse. This research has been featured in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology and on the Jane Pauley show (NBC). Gayle currently is adjunct faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has a forgiveness therapy consulting practice. Gayle loves bible study, quilting, knitting, walking, her three adult children, and her adorable grandchild Samaria.

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Caryn Reeder is professor of New Testament at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, but she spent the 2013-2014 academic year as a Fulbright Scholar at Bethlehem University in the West Bank. She's researching and writing about the realities and rhetoric of women, children, and warfare in the biblical and classical worlds.

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Michelle Ami Reyes

Michelle Reyes (PhD) is the Vice President of the Asian American Christian Collaborative and Co-Executive Director of Pax. She is also the Scholar-in-Residence at Hope Community Church, a minority-led multicultural church in East Austin, Texas, where her husband, Aaron, serves as lead pastor. Michelle's work on faith and culture has been featured in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Missio Alliance, Faithfully Magazine and more. Her forthcoming book on cross-cultural relationships is called Becoming All Things: How Small Changes Lead to Lasting Connections Across Cultures (Zondervan; April 27, 2021). Follow Michelle on Twitter and Instagram.

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Ciara Reyes-Ton

Ciara Reyes-Ton is a biologist, science writer and editor who is passionate about science communication to faith communities. She has a Ph.D. in Cell & Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan. She has served as Managing Editor for the American Scientific Affiliation’s God & Nature Magazine, and previously taught Biology at Belmont University and Nashville State Community College. She is currently the Digital Content Editor for BioLogos and an Adjunct Professor at Lipscomb University. Outside science, she enjoys singing as part of her band Mount Carmell and drinking coffee. She recently released a new single “To Become Human,” a song that explores the biology and theology of what it means to be human. She is also the author of Look Closely, a science and faith devotional that explores the life of Christ by bringing scripture in conversation with science, from water walking lizards to dividing cells and resurrecting corals.

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Amy Reynolds (BA Harvard, PhD Princeton) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Wheaton College and the Coordinator of the Gender Studies Certificate Program. She researches and writes on issues of economic globalization, religion and public life, and gender inequality. Before entering academia, she served with World Relief in El Salvador and with a public elementary charter school in DC. She and her husband Stephen Offutt, an assistant professor of development studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, have three daughters.

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Freelance writer and editor Kami Rice relocated to southern France in 2012 to study French. Presently based in Marseille, she aims to cover international stories with as much nuance and as little caricaturizing as possible. Follow her adventures on Twitter and Instagram.

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Jan is an artist, writer, and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. She serves as director of The Wellspring Studio, LLC, and has traveled widely as a retreat leader and conference speaker. Known for her distinctive intertwining of word and image, Jan’s work has attracted an international audience drawn to the welcoming and imaginative spaces that she creates in her books, online blogs, and public events.

A native Floridian several generations over, Jan grew up in Evinston, a small community near the university town of Gainesville. The rural landscape, community traditions, and lifelong relationships fostered a rich sense of place, imagination, and ritual that continue to shape Jan's life and infuse her work.

Jan makes her home in Florida. She often collaborated with her husband, the singer/songwriter Garrison Doles, until his sudden death in December 2013.

You can find Jan's distinctive artwork, writing, and more at her blogs and websites:

The Painted Prayerbook The Advent Door Jan Richardson Images Sanctuary of Women

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Allison Rieck has a BA in English, an MA in Christian formation and ministry, and is currently pursuing an MS in nutrition. Prior to returning to school, she worked as managing editor at InterVarsity Press. When she's not studying, she likes to spend her time reading, cooking, going to classes at her gym and having long chats with friends over a cup of hot tea.

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Lisa Rieck is a writer and editor on InterVarsity’s communications team. She worked at InterVarsity Press for over nine years as a proofreader and Bible study editor (and, as it were, resident limerick-writer). She is continually inspired by the beauty of the sky and loves good conversation with family and friends over steaming-hot beverages.

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