Featured Guests
Trusted experts and scholars from The Forge of Friendship
Owen A. Barfield
Owen A. Barfield is the grandson and trustee to Owen Barfield (1898–1997), who became known as the “first and last Inkling”— scholar, friend and creative contemporary of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
Steven Beebe
Steven A. Beebe (born September 19, 1950) is an American professor of communication. and C. S. Lewis scholar who discovered a fragment of an unpublished manuscript started by Lewis that was to be co-authored by J. R. R. Tolkien about communication (Language and Human Nature).
Joanna Browning
Michael Christensen
Michael J. Christensen (M.A., Yale, Ph.D., Drew) is Professor of Theology and Academic Dean at Northwind Seminary. A noted C. S. Lewis scholar, Dr. Christensen is the author of C.S. Lewis on Scripture, contributor to the C.S. Lewis Bible, and has taught courses on Lewis and the Inklings over many years.
Mario Costa-Sa
Janet Croft
Robin Darwall-Smith
Robin Haydon Darwall-Smith (Fellow-Royal Historical Society, Fellow-Society of Antiquaries) is a British archivist associated with several Oxford University College archives. As an undergraduate and postgraduate, Darwall-Smith studied classics at University College, Oxford under prominent Rhodes Scholar George Cawkwell.
Colin Duriez
Colin Duriez has taught, written and spoken worldwide on C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and the Inklings for nearly thirty years. His best-known books include The C. S. Lewis Encyclopedia, The Inklings Handbook, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship, and A Field Guide to Narnia.
Niall Ferguson
Niall Campbell Ferguson is a Scottish–American historian who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.
John Garth
Writer, editor and researcher John Garth is well known for his ongoing work on J.R.R. Tolkien’s life and creativity. In 2017 he became only the fourth winner of the Tolkien Society’s Outstanding Contribution Award. His first book, Tolkien and the Great War (2003), won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award.
Diana Pavlac Glyer
Diana Glyer is an award-winning writer whose research focuses on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings. Her books The Company They Keep and Bandersnatch offer in-depth accounts of Lewis and Tolkien, their writing processes and the importance of their creative visions.
Julia Golding
Julia Golding (pen names Joss Stirling and Eve Edwards), is a best-selling British novelist, screenwriter, and podcaster, known for The Diamond of Drury Lane, the Cat Royal series and The Companions Quartet. She is also Director of the Oxford Centre for Fantasy which uses writers such as Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll to inspire new creativity.
Jane Greenham
Jane (Dowling) Greenham (1925-2023) was a distinguished artist and revered teacher who was married to the artist Peter Greenham. She studied art at the Slade School of Fine Art, but her academics led her further to Oxford, where she became one of the first (if not the first) female students to be tutored by C.S. Lewis.
Malcolm Guite
Malcolm Guite is a chaplain, poet, singer-songwriter, and author of eight books, including What Do Christians Believe? and Sounding the Seasons. His interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, notably within the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.
Myk Habets
Myk is Senior Lecturer in Theology and Head of the School of Theology at Laidlaw College and has Senior Researcher status with AUT and ACT. A Baptist pastor and author, Habets has published over twenty-four books, including The Anointed Son and The Progressive Mystery. His special interests include the theology C.S. Lewis and the theological interpretation of Scripture.
Bruce Herman
Bruce Herman is an artist and lecturer who holds the Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in the art department of Gordon College. His work has been exhibited around the world, and has paintings housed in the Vatican Museum of Modern Religious Art, the Cincinnati Museum of Fine Arts, and the DeCordova Museum.
Sørina Higgins
Sørina Higgins is a consulting editor, author, English teacher, and award-winning scholar of British modernist literature. She is currently writing a series of lectures on the Inklings while awaiting her forthcoming book The Oddest Inkling: An Introduction to Charles Williams.
Walter Hooper
Walter Hooper served briefly in 1963 as C.S. Lewis’s private secretary when Lewis was in declining health. He devoted himself to Lewis’s memory after his death in November 1963, eventually taking up residence in Oxford, England, where he lived until his death. Hooper became a C.S. Lewis papers custodian, advocate, and editor of his works.
Simon Horobin
Simon Horobin is a British philologist and author, professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Magdalen College. His major research interests are in the history of the English Language, especially in the Medieval period. He has lectured to a variety of audiences on C.S. Lewis and has published articles on Lewis’s scholarly writings.
Crystal Hurd
Crystal Hurd is an educator and researcher from Virginia. She has spent the past decade exploring and researching the biographical and rhetorical aspects of C.S Lewis. Her dissertation applied Transformational Leadership theory to his life and works. She serves as a review editor at Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal and is currently researching the role of artists as leaders.
Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson
Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson is a George MacDonald scholar from Ottawa Valley, Canada. She writes and lectures internationally on MacDonald, the Inklings, the 19th century, and faith and the arts. She is on the Advisory Board of Inklings Journal VII, a founding Board Member of the C.S. Lewis & Kindreds Society of Eastern & Central Europe, and co-chair of the George MacDonald Society. She directs Windstone Farm Linlathen, a non-profit that seeks to cultivate community through theology, ecology and the arts.
Bruce R. Johnson
Bruce R. Johnson is a pastor, editor of The Undiscovered C. S. Lewis, and General Editor of Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal. He has lectured on Lewis in Britain and the U.S. and contributed essays on Lewis for various journals and books. The focus of his current research is the work of Lewis with RAF Chaplains during World War II.
Rob Jones
Rob Jones is a musician, author and poet from Nashville, TN. He has written across a wide variety of interests, including children’s books and romance novels. His most recent title The Hidden Work, is a collection of poems inspired by the writings of C.S. Lewis.
Stuart Lee
Stuart D. Lee is a member of the English Faculty and Merton College, and Deputy CIO at the University of Oxford. His research and teaching focus on Old English, World War One literature, and the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Amy Lee
Amy Baik Lee is a columnist for Cultivating Magazine, a contributing writer for the Rabbit Room, a literary member of the Anselm Society Arts Guild and a founding member The Maker’s Project. She is author of This Homeward Ache. A lifelong appreciator of stories, she holds an MA in English literature from the University of Virginia.
John Lennox
John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University (emeritus), is an internationally renowned speaker on the interface of science, philosophy and religion. He teaches at many academic institutions, is Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum and has written a series of books exploring the relationship between science and Christianity.
Jason Lepojärvi
President of the Oxford University C.S. Lewis Society, Jason Lepojärvi works as the C.S. Lewis Associate Professor of Theology and Literature at George Fox University in Oregon and serves as the Managing Editor of Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal.
Alister McGrath
Alister McGrath is a theologian, Anglican priest, historian, scientist, apologist, and intellectual. A faculty member at Oxford, McGrath has also taught at Cambridge University and is a Teaching Fellow at Regent College. Among his best-known books are The Twilight of Atheism, and The Dawkins Delusion?
Erwin McManus
Erwin McManus is a renowned life architect, award-winning author, and artist. He has over one million book sales with translations into multiple languages. As the founder and lead pastor of Mosaic, a global spiritual movement, he has inspired millions and leads impactful humanitarian initiatives.
Holly Ordway
Holly Ordway is the Cardinal Francis George Professor of Faith and Culture at the Word on Fire Institute, and Visiting Professor of Apologetics at Houston Christian University. She is a subject editor for Journal of Inklings Studies, author of the award-winning Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages, Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography and contributor to other works on the writings of Tolkien and Lewis.
Jahdiel Perez
Jahdiel Perez is professor of Humanities & Sciences at Villanova University. His doctoral dissertation was supervised by fellow FOF academics Alister McGrath and Michael Ward. While attending Oxford, Perez was President of the C.S. Lewis Society and a Doctoral Fellow with the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. His research ranges from analytic and continental philosophy of religion to modern theology and English literature.
Joe Ricke
Joe Martyn Ricke is a scholar and writer who has authored and edited articles and book chapters on early drama, Shakespeare, the Inklings and their influences. His essays have appeared in such publications as North Wind, Sehnsucht, The Lamp-Post, Medieavalia, Sixteenth Century Journal and the Journal of Inkling Studies. Formerly a director of the Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis & Friends at Taylor University, he also an avid singer, songwriter, poet, and actor.
Michael St. Maur Sheil
British photographer and historian Michael St. Maur Sheil has spent his career documenting the horrors of war, particularly the effects that WWI had in Britain and across the globe—and how this monumental event shaped the lives and works of Lewis and Tolkien.
Charlie Starr
Author and teacher Charlie Starr has published numerous essays, articles, book chapters, and seven books including The Faun’s Bookshelf: C. S. Lewis on Why Myth Matters. He has published three never-before seen C. S. Lewis manuscripts and plans to release an additional 24 new Lewis documents including a lost sequel to The Screwtape Letters. He has also been hailed as the world’s leading expert on C. S. Lewis’s handwriting.
Curt Thompson
Psychiatrist, speaker and author Curt Thompson works to weave together interpersonal neurobiology with a Christian worldview to understand what it means to be human, to feel known, to be valued and connected. His works include Anatomy of the Soul, The Soul of Shame and The Deepest Place.
Sheridan Voysey
Sheridan Voysey is an author, speaker and broadcaster. He has written eight books, including Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams into New Beginnings and the award-winning Unseen Footprints. His writing has been featured in various publications, and he writes regularly for Our Daily Bread, a devotional read by 90 million people daily. He has spoken at both the C.S. Lewis Foundation and the C.S. Lewis Summer Institute.
Michael Ward
Michael Ward is an English literary critic and theologian. His academic focus is theological imagination, especially in the writings of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and G. K. Chesterton. He is best known for his book Planet Narnia. On the fiftieth anniversary of Lewis’s death, Ward unveiled a permanent national memorial to him in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey.