Leslie Leyland Fields is an international teacher, speaker, and the award-winning author of twelve books, including Your Story Matters, The Wonder Years, and Crossing the Waters, which won a Christianity Today Book Award in Christian Living. Since 2013 she's been leading The Harvester Island Writers' Workshop on her family's island in Alaska with guest writers like Ann Voskamp, Philip Yancey, Bret Lott, Luci Shaw, Jeanne Murray Walker, Paul Willis, and Gina Ochsner.

Leslie's other books include Surviving the Island of Grace, Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers, and The Spirit of Food, which won three "Best Book of 2010" awards. Her books have been translated into nine languages and her essays have appeared in publications including Christianity Today, Books and Culture, Belief.net, The Atlantic, Orion, Best Essays, and many more, earning her a number of Evangelical Press Awards. 

Leslie has three graduate degrees (in English, journalism, and an MFA in creative nonfiction) and has taught extensively, including being a founding faculty member of Seattle Pacific University's MFA program. She leads faith and writing retreats around the world and directs an online community in the craft and art of spiritual memoir. She's also a professional audio narrator, contributing regularly to the popular Our American Stories radio network and audio recording books of the Bible for her.Bible.org.

Read a bonus poem that Leslie wrote for A Radiant Birth, "No Country for Two Kings."