After teaching sociology for 20 years Lisa McMinn traded in her professor status to become a Writer in Residence at George Fox University, where she most recently taught. Partly she wanted more time to farm. Partly she wanted more time to write and speak. She lives on Fern Creek, a small farm outside of Newberg, Oregon, where she and her husband, Mark, tend chickens and bees and grow food for 25 families using the CSA model (Community Supported Agriculture). They love the smell of dirt, fresh strawberries and bee hives, and all the work associated with those things.

These days she writes about sustainable agriculture, contentment and environmental issues, and the bulk of her current writing happens on her blog, Preserving Life at Fern Creek. She speaks several times a year as she can fit it in with farming, addressing sexuality and relationships, contentment, and occasionally sustainability, ecology and food ethics--mostly on college campuses. Her books include, Sexuality and Holy Longing (Josse Bass 2004), Growing Strong Daughters (Baker 2007), The Contented Soul (IVP 2006), Walking Gently on the Earth (IVP 2010), and Dirt and the Good Life: Stories of Fern Creek (Barclay Press 2012)--this last one co-written with her husband.

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