It's a tremendous joy to announce that our Kickoff Sunday speaker for 2022 will be Catholic author, journalist, and academic Kaya Oakes. Here's a bit of the profile from her website, oakestown.org:

Kaya Oakes is the author of five books, most recently including The Nones Are Alright (Orbis Books, 2015) and Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Catholic Church (Counterpoint Press, 2012). The Defiant Middle: How Women Claim Life’s In Betweens to Remake the World, was published by Broadleaf Books in 2021. Her sixth book, on the limits of forgiveness, is forthcoming in 2024.

Kaya’s essays and journalism have appeared in The New Republic, Slate, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Sojourners, National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, Religion Dispatches, Tricycle, On Being, America, and many other publications.

Since 1999, Kaya has been a faculty member in the College Writing Programs at UC Berkeley, where she teaches creative nonfiction, composition, and research writing. She has also been a distinguished visiting writer in nonfiction at St. Mary’s College as well as guest faculty at Bellarmine University and The Jesuit School of Theology at the Graduate Theological Union. Kaya was born and raised in Oakland, California, where she still lives.

Kaya's own journey has taken her from an Irish Catholic childhood, to atheism, and back to the Catholic Church as an advocate for social justice and marginalized voices within the Church. She is also a faithful friend to Christians of all denominations who works in both ecumenical and interfaith contexts. Please join us Saturday, September 10 (time TBA), and Sunday, September 11 (at the 9:30 forum) for a special East Coast visit with Kaya Oakes!

Find out more about Kaya's books here: oakestown.org/books