Katherine Ozment presents Grace Without God: The Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging in a Secular Age— a personal and critical exploration of the many ways nonreligious Americans create their own meaning and purpose in an increasingly secular age. As a writer, journalist, and secular mother of three, Ozment came face-to-face with the fundamental issue when her son asked her the simplest of questions: “what are we?” Unsettled by her reply—“Nothing”—she set out to find a better answer. She went to visit diverse congregations, from an atheist church to a storytelling gathering to a nature-based coming-of-age ritual. She turned to science and the humanities, seeking guidance from noted scholars in a wide range of disciplines. She interviewed community leaders and parents, and explored her own family’s attempts to find connection without religion.
Katherine Ozment is an award-winning journalist and former senior editor at National Geographic. Her essays and articles have been published in National Geographic, the New York Times, Boston, Fitness, and Salon, among other publications. She is a graduate of Harvard University and received a Masters in Writing from DePaul University. She lives in Chicago with her husband, an environmental economist, and their three children.
Laura Fraser, a journalist and cofounder and editorial director of Shebooks, is the New York Times–best-selling author of the memoirs An Italian Affair and All Over the Map, as well as Losing It, an exposé of the diet industry. She is a longtime member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, where she teaches classes. Fraser is an obsessive literature junkie: not only does she alphabetize the fiction on her shelves at home, she’s kept a list of every book she’s read since she was 12. She is most recently the author of the Shebooks travel memoir The Risotto Guru.
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