The Habit

Besides being an award-winning teacher and professor of theology & ethics at Lipscomb University, Lee Camp hosts No Small Endeavor, a podcast that asks What does it mean to live a good life? What is true happiness? What are the habits, practices, and dispositions that facilitate human flourishing? Lee Camp explores these and similar questions with some of the most influential authors, scientis...

Professor Alan Noble is a voice of good sense in a world where good sense seems to be in short supply. His new book is To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times . It is a call to return to the old paths as laid out in the seven virtues of Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, Faith, Hope, and Love. In this episode, Alan and Jonathan Rogers talk about the limits of techniq...

Jennifer Trafton’s new book is If Only We Could See: Reimagining Creativity, Compassion, and Calling Through the Extraordinary Life of Lilias Trotter. An historian, a visual artist, and a novelist, Jennifer is uniquely qualified to tell this story. In this episode, Jennifer and Jonathan Rogers talk about the remarkable life of artist and missionary Lilias Trotter. They also talk about the em...

Leslie Bustard did a lot of thinking, teaching, and writing about what God made women to be–as distinct from what women can and can’t do. She was working on a book on this topic when she died in 2023. In the last months of Leslie’s earthly life, writer and editor Théa Rosenburg came alongside to help Leslie get the book over the finish line. As it happened, Théa had...

Jamie Quatro is the author of Two Step Devil, a southern Gothic novel very much in the tradition of Flannery O’Connor. The Booklist review of Two-Step Devil describes it as "Brilliantly paced and exquisitely detailed, this striking novel takes on such weighty themes as faith, humanity, and frailty without a touch of melodrama . . . A spectacular masterpiece.” Bookpage called Quatro "a...

Joy Clarkson  is the author of  Aggressively Happy  and host of the podcast,  Speaking with Joy . She is the books editor for  Plough Quarterly  and a research associate in theology and literature at King's College London. Joy completed her PhD in theology at the University of St Andrews, where she researched how art can be a resource of hope and consolation. Her new...

Timothy Jones is a pastor and author known for helping people uncover greater warmth and depth in their relationship with God. His new book is Fully Beloved: Meeting God in Our Heartaches and Our Hopes . As Sandra Mccracken says, Fully Beloved “names the ache of loneliness and our lifelong quest for belonging.” In this episode, Tim Jones and Jonathan Rogers talk about the Trinity, Juli...

Bethaney B. Wilkinson is a writer, spiritual director, podcaster, and facilitator who is passionate about slow, sustainable, and soul-nourishing living. Her new book is A More Beautiful Way to Live: Nine Practices to Unlearn Habits of Anxiety, Fear, and Urgency . In this episode, Bethaney and Jonathan Roger talk about tending to your inner terrain, paying attention to your longings while also payi...

Wesley Vander Lugt  is a pastor, theologian, writer, teacher, nonprofit leader, and arts advocate with a passion for beauty, slowness, cultivation, and kinship. He currently works as the Acting Director of the Leighton Ford Center for Theology, the Arts, and Gospel Witness and is Adjunct Professor of Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Charlotte. He is also the Co-Founder of Ki...

Becca Jordan has referred to herself as a wandering songbird. She’s a singer-songwriter, a writer of essays , and a worship leader in Nashville. She is also working on a Masters Degree in Theopoetics. Becca was our guest at The Habit’s 2026 Winter Writer’s Weekend. The theme of that weekend was “Adding to the Glory.” Becca is an artist who has put a lot of glory into...

Curt Thompson is a psychiatrist, a speaker, and the author of several books–most recently, The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope . In this episode, Curt and Jonathan Rogers talk about what it means to be hospitable to your own suffering, engaging suffering as the way of redemption, and the role of storytelling in mental and spiritual health. This episode originally ran in Au...

Andrew Roycroft is a freelance editor and writer. He has published poetry in a number of Irish and British literary journals, has produced work for BBC Radio 4, has contributed to Arts Council Northern Ireland projects, and written commissioned work for New Irish Arts. Andrew is also a regular contributor to the Rabbit Room Poetry community. His Substack is New Grub Street . In this episode, Andre...

Marsh Moyle is an interesting man. He’s an Englishman but he grew up in Malta. He and his wife Tuula lived for 17 years in Vienna when the Iron Curtain divided Europe. There they organised book translation and distribution while researching the beliefs, practices, and problems of life under communism. In the post-communist period, they lived in Slovakia for 16 years, establishing publishing...

This week's episode is an old favorite from 2024. Leif Enger writes novels about good people living through bad times. His new book,  I Cheerfully Refuse , epitomizes what the Los Angeles Tines calls Enger's “musical, sometimes magical and deeply satisfying kind of storytelling.” In this episode, Leif Enger and Jonathan Rogers talk about dystopian fiction; courage, literacy, and h...

Joyce McPherson has written ten biographies–as well as several middle-grade novels–in 45 minute increments snatched from a busy life as a mother of nine and as a college instructor. Her most recent book is a biography of Jane Austen . In this episode, Joyce McPherson and Jonathan Rogers talk about how her mother convinced her to start writing for publication when she had two small chil...

Winfield Bevins is an author, a visual artist, and the founding director of Creo Arts , a non-profit that exists to bring beauty, goodness, and truth to the world through the arts. His new book is How Beauty Will Save the World: Recovering the Power of the Arts for the Christian Life . In this episode, Winfield and Jonathan Rogers talk about how beauty will save the world. They also talk about a m...

Daniel Nayeri’s latest novel— The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story —recently received the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. In this episode Daniel speaks with Jonathan Rogers about Iran’s role in World War II, food writing, fathers, providence, the wisdom of children, and incompetent spies. This episode is sponsored by The Habit Writer Deve...

You probably know Sally Lloyd-Jones as the author of the Jesus Storybook Bible , a book that has been around for almost twenty years. She has also published more than twenty other books for children, including Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing, His Royal Highness King Baby, and Skip to the Loo: A Potty Book . Her latest is Jesus, Our True Friend . Sally is committed to delight, and that makes her a...

Galahad and the Grail is Book 1 of Merlin’s Isle, Malcolm Guite’s retelling of the King Arthur legends in ballad form. It releases in March of 2026. In the prelude to Galahad and the Grail, a voice shimmering in the morning air says: Poet, take up the tale– Take up the tale the land still keeps, In earth and water magic sleeps, The dryad sighs, the naiad weeps, But you can lift t...

Besides being the proprietor of the much-loved Substack, Miller's Book Review, Joel Miller is the author of a new book that has made its way into the world after a thirteen-year gestation. In The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future, Joel make the case that books are one of the most important but overlooked factors in the making of our contemporary world. Books don't just p...

Mischa Willett is a poet and writing professor. He is the Director of the Whitworth Writers' Workshop MFA in Creative Writing at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. In this episode, Mischa Willett and Jonathan Rogers talk about MFA programs, failure as a means of getting work done, and apology letters written by robots. This episode is sponsored by The Habit Writer Development Cohorts. Jo...

In her role as poet, Rachel Donahue has a track record of gathering other poets, encouraging them in their work, and giving them space to shine. In her role as publisher and editor at Bandersnatch Books, she has done all those things for poets by envisioning, then bringing to life I’ve Got a Bad Case of Poetry , an anthology of poems for children by dozens of poets, gorgeously illustrated by...

Rabbit Room Press has started a new podcast called Rabbit Room Press Presents , serialized audiobooks of favorite Rabbit Room Press titles. The first season consisted of the seventeen interviews with poets that make up Ben Palpant’s book, An Axe for the Frozen Sea . Each episode is a different interview. Besides being an excellent writer in his own right, Ben is a great interviewer. This epi...

Katherine Ladny Mitchell is a mystery-writer. Not To Be is the first in her Pen and Paintbrush mystery series, in which a writer and a painter, two sisters, work together as amateur sleuths. In this episode, Katherine and Jonathan Rogers talk about the rules of mystery stories, and how they apply to other kinds of storytelling. And they discuss the ways that the habit of art could make artists of...

Dr. Grace Hamman is a writer and independent scholar of late medieval poetry and contemplative writing. Her work has been published by academic and popular outlets, including Plough Quarterly and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies . Her new book is Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues and Vices for a Whole and Holy Life . In this episode, Grace and Jonathan Rogers talk about the virtue...