The Habit

Besides being a novelist, Pete Peterson is a playwright and the head of Rabbit Room Theater. He is also the publisher at Rabbit Room Press. Matt Logan is the director, set designer, and costume designer who has brought all of Pete’s plays to vivid life. Matt and Pete are putting the finishing touches on a new stage adaptation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol . Its inaugural run will be December 7-De...

Leslie Eiler Thompson is a podcast producer and writer. Her work has been featured on Apple Podcasts, The Guardian, Nashville Public Radio, Christianity Today, Rabbit Room, and beyond. Her newest audio project, Niche to Meet You , is an investigative storytelling podcast about little-known niche interests and hobbies where we make and find meaning. One of the niche interests she has investigated i...

Willie Pearl is an Americana/Southern rock band from Nashville, Tennessee. Their new album is called Willie Pearl . In this special bonus episode, singer-songwriter Henry Rogers of Willie Pearl speaks with Jonathan Rogers about songwriting, perfectionism, and letting go. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Caroline Cobb is a singer-songwriter known for her deep engagement with Scripture. Her first foray into book-writing is Advent for Exiles: 25 Devotions to Awaken Gospel Hope in Every Longing Heart . In this episode, Caroline and Jonathan Rogers discuss the idea of exile, a pervasive theme in the Bible, as well as the artist’s role of planting seeds for the new Eden. The Habit Podcast is sponsored...

Lanier Ivester sees hospitality as a primary way she expresses her creativity. All of her creative endeavors are shaped by the belief that the most quotidian things are charged with eternal meaning, if only we have eyes to see. Her new book, illustrated by Jennifer Trafton, is Glad and Golden Hours: A Companion for Advent and Christmastide . In this episode, Lanier and Jonathan Rogers talk about t...

This week's guest is Kathleen Norris. Her best known books include Acedia and Me, The Cloister Walk, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, and Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith . A Benedictine oblate, she practices the Benedictines’ commitment to good order and deep hospitality her writing. Kathleen Norris’s new book she co-authored with Gareth Higgins. It’s called A Whole Life in Twelve Movies: a Cin...

You may know Randall Goodgame as a purveyor of children’s music . His new project is for people of all ages. In the Scripture Hymnal , Randall has written and arranged music for 106 word-for-word Bible passages, for congregational singing. In addition to the hymnal, Randall and friends have recorded all 106 hymns with full instrumentation and rich production, to be released as ten albums over the...

Russ Ramsey is a gifted storyteller and a trusted guide in the world of art. His new book is Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About The Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive . In this episode, Russ and Jonathan Rogers talk about sunflowers, the sublime, and the connection between suffering and wonder. Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/lis...

Stephanie Duncan Smith is a senior editor for HarperOne. She has spent her career developing award-winning and bestselling authors. She is the creator of Slant Letter , a Substack email newsletter for writers who want to deepen their craft and do it in style. She is also the author of Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway . In this episode, Stephanie...

Steven James has written and published about twenty books in the last couple of decades. Most of his novels and been thrillers. But with his new novel, Rift , he’s doing something completely new: young adult Appalachian folktale horror. Steven has lived in the southern Appalachians since the 1990s. The part of East Tennessee where  Rift is set was hit really hard by Hurricane Helene a couple of we...

Carolyn Leiloglou is the author of the middle grade fantasy series The Restorationists. Book Two of that series, Between Flowers and Bones , has been recently released. In this episode, Carolyn and I talk about writing about family, balancing motherhood with creative pursuits, and the ways that interacting with visual art enriches writing. Here's a video of Carolyn in San Antonio's McNay Art Museu...

John Hendrix is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of many books. His award-winning illustrations have also appeared on book jackets, newspapers, and magazines all over the world. The Society of Illustrators named John the Distinguished Educator in the Arts for 2024. He is the Kenneth E. Hudson Professor of Art and the founding Chair of the MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture p...

Daniel Silliman is senior news editor for Christianity Today. He earned a doctorate in American studies from Heidelberg University in Germany and has taught US history and humanities at Heidelberg, the University of Notre Dame, Valparaiso University, and Milligan University. His new book is One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation . From the jacket copy: "Impious and amoral, petty and v...

In this back-to-school episode Jonathan Rogers speaks with Rachel Griffis and Rachel De Smith Roberts about their book, Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age . Dr. Griffis is a professor of English at Spring Arbor University in Michigan, and Dr. Roberts is an associate professor of English at North Greenville University in South Carolina. In...

Jared C. Wilson is an author of over twenty books and a popular speaker at churches and conferences around the world. He serves as Pastor for Preaching and the Director of the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri. He is also an Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Author in Residence at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. His...

As of last week, all three books of Jonathan Rogers's Wilderking Trilogy, 20th Anniversary Deluxe Hardback edition, have been released into the wild. The Bark of the Bog Owl released in June. And now The Secret of the Swamp King and The Way of the Wilderking are available wherever you buy books. These new editions have gorgeous new covers by Stephen Crotts and exceedingly swampy new interior illus...

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...

Lanta Davis is a professor of humanities and literature in the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University. Her new book is Becoming by Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation . In this episode, Dr. Davis and Jonathan Rogers talk about the perhaps counterintuitive truth that neglecting to engage our imagination makes us more susceptible to imaginative influence...

Joel Miller has been an editor, a publisher, and an author. He is currently working on a book on the history of the book. He also writes an excellent twice-a-week Substack newsletter called Miller’s Book Review . In this episode, Joel and Jonathan Rogers discuss Joel's journey toward publication—and how Joel gets so much reading and writing done while holding down a full-time job an raising a fami...

Dr. Shirley Mullen is President Emerita of Houghton College in New York State and the author of Claiming the Courageous Middle: Daring to Live and Work Together for a More Hopeful Future . In this episode, Dr. Mullen and Jonathan Rogers discuss the idea that, in an era of such dangerous polarization, the “courageous middle” is not a place of bland averaging, moral cowardice, indecisiveness, or ind...

Dr. Junius Johnson is an independent scholar and teacher and a public intellectual who devotes his time to thinking and writing about whatever is noble and excellent, and how to bring those things to bear to nurture meaningful lives. You can find out more about his classes at JuniusJohnson.com . In this episode, Junius and Jonathan Rogers talk about receiving wonder and adding to the stock of the...

Karen Stiller writes about  the intersections between faith and the world, social issues, matters of justice and doing better. Her most recent book is Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life . In this episode, Karen and Jonathan Rogers talk about holiness as a matter of loving people well as opposed to telling them how they have fallen short–and what that holiness...

In this interview, recorded in front of a live audience at The Habit Summer Writers Weekend in June 2024, Doug McKelvey discusses the ups and downs of a muti-faceted writing career. Doug is the author of the Every Moment Holy books . Support the show: https://therabbitroom.givingfuel.com/member See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Elizabeth Oldfield hosts The Sacred , a podcast about our deepest values, the stories that shape us, and how we can build empathy and understanding between people who are very different. She has a regular column for UnHerd and has appeared on BBC One, Radio 5Live, Radio 4, and The World Service. Her work has appeared in The Financial Times, Prospect, The Times , CNN, The Guardian , and beyond. She...

The 20th-Anniversary Deluxe Hardback Edition of The Bark of the Bog Owl is now available. It has a new cover by Stephen Crotts, new interior illustrations by Joe Hox, and bonus material (poems, songs, riddles) by Jonathan Rogers. To celebrate the Bog Owl's twentieth birthday, Jonathan reads an excerpt in this bonus episode.  You can get your own copy of The Bark of the Bog Owl at the Rabbit Room s...