EcoTheo Collective

PRESIDENT, BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Anya Backlund is the president-owner (since 2020) of Blue Flower Arts, a literary speakers agency representing award-winning poets, novelists, journalists, and artists. She reads widely and cares deeply about the literary community in the Twin Cities, where she lives. 

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Devon Abts is a theologian, literary scholar, and humanities educator. She currently serves as Director of Operations & Research for the Clemente Course in the Humanities, and is a visiting research fellow at King’s College London.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Cynthia Briggs Kittredge is Dean Emerita and Professor of New Testament at seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. She is the author of A Lot of the Way Trees Were Walking: Poems from the Gospel of Mark.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Sam Candler is a priest in the Episcopal Church, presently Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta. He was raised, however, on a farm in Coweta County, about an hour south of Atlanta, and learned there to love the woods and the stars and the birds. The Atlantic Ocean coast of Georgia and the rocks and lakes of Ontario, Canada, have also nurtured his spiritual life. Intending to be a jazz musician, he spent four years at Occidental College in Los Angeles and then three years at seminary at Yale. Sam Candler plays piano and looks for stars and birds as often as he can. Some of his poems have been published in The Mendicant, Poetry South, Salvation South, and Atlanta Review.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Alison Granucci is a Pushcart-nominated poet and naturalist living in the Hudson Valley. In 2005, she founded Blue Flower Arts, a literary speaker’s agency—then embarked upon her own writing when she retired in 2020. Alison's first published poem appeared in EcoTheo Review (2022), and she's since been featured in numerous journals. Her debut collection of poems is forthcoming from Tupelo Press (January 2028).

WEBSITE

DIRECTOR EMERITUS, FOUNDER OF LOGOS

Travis Helms is an Episcopal priest and Founder + Director of LOGOS. Having served as an Executive Director of EcoTheo Collective from 2020 to winter 2024, he is passionate about exploring the connection between theology and the imagination.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Kim T. Le advises healthcare entities, biotechnology companies, and investors on a broad range of business and operational matters, particularly regulatory compliance, risk mitigation, and cybersecurity. She is committed to the protection of vulnerable persons and communities, serving as an advisor to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Human Rights Campaign, and the U.N. World Food Programme, and as a founding member of Soleil Academy, a literacy-acquisition focused charter school serving the Lynwood and Compton neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Poet and prose writer Shann Ray teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University, poetry at Stanford, and poetry for the Center for Contemplative Leadership at Princeton Theological Seminary.

WEBSITE

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Roger Reeves earned his PhD from the University of Texas, Austin, and is the author of King Me (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), winner of the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, and a John C. Zacharis First Book Award.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Melanie Rudnick is a writer, researcher, and multi-generational California land steward. She earned her PhD in Leadership Studies, exploring ranching, legacy, and the lives of entrepreneurial founders. Her work weaves rural life, creative inquiry, and cultural continuity with a reverence for ecology, Indigenous perspective, and spiritual practice.

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Anastacia-Reneé is an award-winning cross-genre writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDX speaker and podcaster. Renee is the author of (v.), (Black Ocean Press), Forget It (Black Radish Press) and Answer(Me), (Winged City Chapbook Press).

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Eugénie Bisulco received her undergraduate degree in English and Studio Art from Wellesley College, earning honors in Studio Art and graduating magna cum laude. Later, she received a Master of Arts in Writing from Johns Hopkins University.

ADVISORY COUNCIL

CMarie Fuhrman is a writer whose work is shaped by the Western landscape. She is the author of Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return, and the poetry chapbook Camped Beneath the Dam. CMarie is the director of the Elk River Writers Workshop and an award-winning columnist for The Inlander. She is the Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Western Colorado University, where she also teaches poetry and nature writing.

WEBSITE

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Natalie Graham earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Florida and Ph.D. in American Studies at Michigan State University.

WEBSITE

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Spencer Reece authored two prize-winning books of poetry, The Clerk's Tale and The Road to Emmaus. He edited an anthology of poems, Counting Time Like People Count Stars: Poetry by the Girls of Our Little Roses, San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Allison Seay is the author of To See the Queen (Persea Books, 2013), which won the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize. She holds degrees from Mary Washington College and the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She serves as chaplain at Saint Michael’s Episcopal School in Richmond, Virginia.