Ekundayo Bandele is a renowned playwright and theater director whose work has significantly impacted the American theater landscape. His play “Judas Hands” premiered at Cleveland’s Karamu House in 1997, and his subsequent works, such as “If Scrooge Was a Brother” and “Take the Soul Train to Christmas,” have been produced at theaters across the country, including Houston’s Ensemble Theatre and Chicago’s ETA Creative Arts Foundation. In 2006, Bandele founded Hattiloo Theatre in Memphis, TN. As its CEO, he curates annual seasons of plays and programs that celebrate Black culture. He successfully raised 10 million dollars to build and expand Hattiloo Theatre, including a state-of-the-art facility and an endowment. He has also led international initiatives, such as a theater management course in Sudan.

Brown is author of the The Tradition (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition, won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Bennington Review, Buzzfeed, Fence, jubilat, The New Republic, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TIME magazine, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry.

Kim-Kort, (she/they) is a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies at Indiana University. She juggles various jobs, including speaking, writing, and trying to maintain some semblance of sanity raising three athletic children who have games all over the DMV. She believes: “In all times, the Church, and especially the local church, gives me hope. Most days, I don’t understand this hope, how it comes from something that seems so fallible, but I know in my cells that it is because God is present in the places I least expect and always the most human. These places and people teach me to keep looking and showing up—that always stays with me.”

Dr. Jemar Tisby is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the Church’s Complicity in Racism, How to Fight Racism, and How to Fight Racism: Young Reader’s Edition. He is also a history professor at Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville. Tisby has co-hosted the “Pass the Mic” podcast since its inception seven years ago. His writing has been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the New York Times. He is a frequent commentator on outlets such as NPR and CNN’s New Day program. He speaks nationwide on racial justice, U.S. history, and Christianity. Tisby earned his PhD in history and studies race, religion, and social movements in the 20th century.

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest. After serving three congregations—two in downtown Atlanta and one in rural Clarkesville, Georgia—she became the first Butman Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College, where she taught until 2017. Since then, she has spoken at events with wonderful names like Wild Goose, Evolving Faith, Awakening Soul, and Gladdening Light, but her favorite gig is being the full-time caretaker of a farm in the foothills of the Appalachians with her husband Ed and very many animals. Her new book, Coming Down to Earth, from Convergent Books, will be out in 2026.

Chu serves as an editor-at-large at Travel+Leisure, teacher in residence at Crosspointe Church in North Carolina, and parish associate for storytelling and witness at the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley in California. He is the author of Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America (Harper, 2013) and Good Soil: The Education of an Accidental Farmhand (Convergent/Penguin Random House, 2025). He is also the co-author, with the late Rachel Held Evans, of the New York Times bestseller Wholehearted Faith. Chu is a former Time staff writer and Fast Company editor whose work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Modern Farmer. In his weekly newsletter, “Notes of a Make-Believe Farmer,” Chu writes about spirituality, gardening, food, travel, and culture. An ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America, he lives with his husband, Tristan, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Honoring the memory of the brilliant urban thinker and Calvary parishioner Tommy Pacello, the Rev. Scott Walters will host a conversation with Jason Turner of Mississippi Blvd Christian Church, Stuart Harris of Constellation Properties, and Margaret Haltom, a PhD candidate in urban planning at MIT. All of these are people who believe that how we attend to the built environment has a great impact on human flourishing, which means the design of our cities, neighborhoods, and public spaces are often overlooked spheres in which we can heed Jesus's call to love our neighbors.

Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence, and religion. Growing up in a place with a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe), he finds that language might be the most redeeming. In language, there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. Any artist of words inspires him: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton, Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson, Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.