A conversation with Jeff Chu

Book People welcomes Award-winning writer Jeff Chu on Tuesday, May 6th from 6:00pm to 8:00pm.

Jeff will be in conversation with artist Lanecia Rouse about his new book, Good Soil, a profound meditation on nature, heritage, and belonging, and what our sacred bond with the natural world can teach us about hope.
In his late thirties, Jeff Chu left his job as a magazine writer and found himself at Princeton Theological Seminary’s “Farminary”—a twenty-one-acre working farm where students learn to cultivate the earth while examining life’s biggest questions. Now, he unpacks what he learned about creating “good soil,” both literally and figuratively, drawing lessons from the rhythms of growth, decay, and regeneration that define life on the land.
In gorgeous, transporting reflections, Chu introduces us to the cast of characters, human and not, who became his teachers. While observing the egrets that visit the pond, the worms that turn waste into fertile soil, and the Chinese long beans that get passed over in the farm’s CSA, Chu considers our desire to belong, the story behind the food on our plate, and the significance of his own roots. What is the earth trying to tell us, if we’ll only stop and listen?
Good Soil helps readers connect to the land and to one another at a time when we seem drawn most to the phones in our hands. or nature lovers, foodies, and anyone who has daydreamed about a more fulfilling life, this book is a tribute to friendship, to the sacredness of our bond with the natural world, and to how love can grow from the unlikeliest of places.
 
Jeff Chu is an award-winning journalist and editor-at-large at Travel+Leisure. He is the author of Does Jesus Really Love Me? and 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.
He lives with his husband, Tristan, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 
 
Lanecia A. Rouse is an artist based in both Richmond, VA, and Houston, TX. Her diverse portfolio encompasses collage, abstract painting, photography, teaching, writing, speaking, and curatorial projects for local non-profit organizations. 
Lanecia has taught workshops at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Shakerag Workshops, and The Glen Workshop. She has participated in several residencies, including the Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts in Charleston, SC (2023); the Artists on Site: Series 3 Artist-in-Residence at the Asia Society HTX (2022); and the 2020–2021 Artist-in-Residence for the Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning (CERCL) at Rice University. Currently, she is the Artist-in-Residence partner at Holy Family HTX Episcopal Church in Houston, TX, where she leads the curation team for the Lanecia A. Rouse Gallery. Additionally, she serves on the Board of Directors for Image Journal.
Lanecia’s work was recently featured in Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage, which debuted at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, TN, from September to December 2023, before traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, and The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Wofford College and Duke University Divinity School.