About Brook

Paradise Lust is Brook Wilensky-Lanford’s first book. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker books blog, The Guardian, The New Republic and elsewhere. Brook holds a PhD in Religion in the Americas from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (learn more about that here), a B.A. from Wesleyan University in Theater and Religion, and an M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University, where she won a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship funded by the National Endowment of the Arts. She is the former managing editor of acclaimed online literary magazine Killing the Buddha, and has taught creative and academic writing The City University of New York, The New School for Design; and the University of California Berkeley Online Extension. She lives in Chapel Hill with her husband and two cats. Find her on Twitter here.

Anthologies • Essays • Reviews • Interviews • Excerpts • Science & Religion • Pop Culture

Anthologies:

• Back to the Garden: Bringing Visitors to American Edens, 1885-1956 in The Bible And Global Tourism (T&T Clark/Bloomsbury, 2021)
• How To Talk To ‘Nones’ and Influence People: Rob Bell’s Transrational Experience in The God Beat: What Journalism Has to Say About Faith and Why It Matters (Broadleaf Books, 2021)
• Mark Twain’s Heaven ‘On A Liberal Plan’: Racial Anxiety at the Pearly Gates in American Examples: New Conversations About Religion, Volume 2 (University of Alabama Press, 2022)

Essays:

• How To Talk To ‘Nones’ And Influence People: Rob Bell’s Transrational Experience, The Cubit, 6/6/16
• An Awkward Adaptation of Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet”, The New Yorker, 8/5/15
• Falling Asleep In The Afterlife: Boring Movies About Heaven, The New Republic, 9/11/15
• Putting the ‘Ac’ Back in Alt-Ac, Chronicle Vitae, 7/24/15
• Killing Jesus: History According to Bill O’Reilly, The Guardian, 3/29/15
• Exodus and the Uselessness of the “Bible Movies” Category, The New Republic, 12/12/14
• Tales of a Jewish ‘Nun’, The Jewish Daily Forward, 10/25/14
• Dangerous Lies We Tell About America’s Founding, The New Republic, 7/4/14
• All Aboard The Ark, The Revealer, 5/13/14
• Sweet and Sour Spirituality, Religion Dispatches, 4/25/14
• Maine: A Spiritual Frontier Opens for Business, Religion and Politics, 4/3/14
• Noah Movie Is Closer to the Bible Than Its Critics Will Admit, The New Republic, 3/27/14
• Ninety Years of Spiritual Merchandising, The Huffington Post, 1/9/14
• Discovering Little Syria, New York’s Long-Lost Arab Neighborhood, Religion Dispatches, 5/25/13
• Empowerment Imperative: On Brave and Bloody and Having It All, Guernica Daily, 7/5/12
• The Whole Earth Catalog, Frequencies Project 9/28/11
• Why I Love Lucy,  the exhibition of “Lucy” in Times Square, Killing the Buddha, 9/10/2009
• Rough Transitions,  WKCR 89.9 FM, Storyville in Studio A, 10/8/2008
• Calling Ken Kesey, Salon.com, 11/17/2001

Book Reviews:

• The Shortlist: Religion, The New York Times Book Review, 7/15/16
• Review, Christ Actually, Boston Globe, 12/30/14
• Review, The Lost Book of Mormon, Boston Globe, 11/1/14
• Review, Living With a Wild God by Barbara Ehrenreich, San Francisco Chronicle, 4/18/14
• Review, Finding The Dragon Lady, San Francisco Chronicle, 11/1/13
• Review, The Shelter Cycle, San Francisco Chronicle, 6/9/13
• Review, Far From the Tree, San Francisco Chronicle, 11/26/12
• Review, The Fairies Return & From the Forest, Boston Globe, 11/10/12
• Babel On! books on linguistic diversity, Lapham’s Quarterly, 5/25/12
• Review, The Aleppo Codex, Boston Globe, 5/15/12
• Review, The Story of English in 100 Words, San Francisco Chronicle, 4/8/12
• Religion for Atheists for the Rest of Us, Religion Dispatches, 3/22/12
• Review, Religion for Atheists, Boston Globe, 3/9/12
• Review, Man Seeks God, San Francisco Chronicle, 12/18/11
• Review, Midnight Rising, San Francisco Chronicle, 10/30/11
• Review, A Thousand Lives, San Francisco Chronicle, 10/9/11
• Review: Inside Scientology, San Francisco Chronicle, 7/3/11
• Review, Sweet Heaven When I Die, Boston Globe, 8/20/11
• Review, Sarah Vowell’s Unfamiliar Fishes, The Second Pass, 3/21/2011
• Review, Einstein’s God by Krista Tippett, Killing the Buddha, 5/24/2010
• Heroes and Villains, biographies of Jesus, Moses, and Satan, Lapham’s Quarterly, 1/19/2010

Interviews:

• Jonas Bendiksen: Among the Messiahs, Guernica, 12/29/17
• ‘Whole Self Movement’: An interview with Rabbi Becky Silverstein, Guernica, 12/15/15
• Questioning America’s Christian Roots: An Interview With Matthew Stewart, The Boston Globe, 7/4/14
• Talking to NOAH’s Screenwriter about Being an Eco-Wacko, Religion Dispatches, 4/14/14
• Religion Comes to Its Senses: Breaking Bread with S. Brent Plate, Religion Dispatches, 3/31/14
• A Series of Small Leaps: Interview with Jessica Wilbanks, Killing the Buddha, 2/11/14
• High Ark: A Geologist on the True Meaning of Noah’s Flood, Religion Dispatches, 9/4/12
• Going Inside Scientology, author Q&A, Huffington Post,  7/6/11
  

Book Excerpts:

• The Last Great Explorer: William F. Warren and the Search for Eden, Public Domain Review, 9/6/12
• The Lawyer Who Found Eden in the Florida Panhandle, Religion and Politics, 7/12/12
• Searching for the Forbidden Fruit of the Garden of Eden, Huffington Post, 9/26/11
• Edens Everywhere, on the destruction of paradise, Killing the Buddha, 8/7/11
• Adam and Eve At Home in Ohio, The Common, Spring 2011 (inaugural issue)
• I’ve Been to the Mormon Garden of Eden, and It’s Not What You Think, Huffington Post, 4/11/11
  
• Eden vs. Eden, World War I-era irrigation in Iraq, The Exquisite Corpse, 10/05/2009
• The Tree of Knowledge in Qurna, Iraq, photo essay, Triple Canopy, 3/17/2008

Science and Religion:

• Your Pseudoscience Beach Read: Creationist Infighting Edition, Religion Dispatches, 6/24/14
• Evidence of Big Bang Discovered!, Religion Dispatches, 3/19/14
• Latest Shroud of Turin Theory: Nuclear Emissions Religion Dispatches, 2/26/14
• When Science Casts Doubt on Religious Details Religion Dispatches, 2/25/14
• Ham On Nye: Beyond the Debate, Killing the Buddha, 2/7/14
• Finding Noah’s Ark: A Misconception of Biblical Proportions, Religion Dispatches, 12/28/12
• Science and Religion–Sibling Rivalry?, Killing the Buddha, 9/5/12
• Science and Religion column for The Faster Times Internet newspaper; 2009

Pop Culture:

• What The Dentist Taught Me About My Depression, The Mighty, 7/27/17
• A Brief History of U.S.-Papal Diplomacy, The New Republic, 9/22/15
• Religion Dispatches blog column, 2014-2016
• When Experimental Theater Meets Experimental Faith: The Wooster Group’s Early Shaker Spirituals, Religion Dispatches, 6/11/14
• Mad Men’s Matt Weiner, Warrior Against “Woo”, Religion Dispatches, 6/4/14
• Making Space For All On Aronofsky’s Ark, Religion Dispatches, 3/28/14
• Sentient Meat & Questionable Redemptions: Tweeting True Detective Religion Dispatches, 3/11/14
• First Behind the Scenes Clip from NOAH… Religion Dispatches, 3/7/14
• True Detective’s Occult Conspiracy Religion Dispatches, 3/7/14
• Bible Blockbusters and Christian Approval Religion Dispatches, 2/27/14
• Shunned: Showing the Amish Without Showing Them Religion Dispatches, 2/6/14
• Heaven Is a Place on Earth Religion Dispatches, 1/16/14
• Confessions of a Former Purist, Killing the Buddha, 10/10/13
• The News Cycle of Jesus’s Wife, Huffington Post, 9/26/12
• Boycotting Another World: Christian Conservatives at the Movies, Books That Saved My Life, 9/27/2008