“I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.” — Flannery O’Connor, 1953 — Karen Swallow Prior earned her Ph.D. in English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is a popular writer and speaker, as well as a columnist for Religion News Service. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vox, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, and many other places. Her most recent book is The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (Brazos, 2023). She and her husband live on a 100-year-old homestead in central Virginia with dogs, chickens and lots of books.