Jonathan Rogers

The figure cut by Jonathan Rogers is one that you might mistake for a run-of-the-mill college professor (you can almost hear the tweed jacket with elbow patches in his voice). But this particular professor simultaneously fulfills, defies, and loogies-in-the face all of those expectations. 

Born in Warner Robins, Georgia (located on the outskirts of Macon (which rhymes with bacon), Jonathan Rogers was meant for a Christ-haunted life filled with alligators, Feechies, and Flannery O’Connor. He insists that he doesn’t remember the day of his birth, but we’re skeptical. These days, he haunts Nashville, Tennessee, along with his wife, six kids, and labrador retriever (no records exist indicating whether or not any labradors have been retrieved to date). Jonathan received his undergraduate degree from Furman University and holds a PhD in seventeenth-century literature from Vanderbilt University. However, if you call him Dr. Rogers, he’ll insist “Dr. Rogers is my father’s name” and then he’ll laugh maniacally for a solid three minutes. Currently, Dr. Rogers (cue laugh) is Head of Program at New Franklin College in Franklin, Tennessee. He also teaches creative writing (which, let’s be honest, is basically just lying). 

Jonathan is a master of the fantasy adventure story. His novels include The Wilderking Trilogy (The Bark of the Bog Owl, The Secret of the Swamp King, and The Way of the Wilderking) and The Charlatan's Boy. His novels are, at turns, hilarious, swashbuckling, dangerous, and deeply affecting, and are, at their heart, descendants of the deep American storytelling tradition. He says, "They harness the humor of that tradition in the service of divine comedy—a worldview in which the sorrows and hurts of this world, as true as they might be, aren’t nearly so true as a vital joy and love that will one day sweep everything before them like a flood.”

When he’s not spilling ink Mark Twain-style, he writes non-fiction books that come at the same ideas from a different angle. His books The World According to Narnia, Saint Patrick, and The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O’Connor are award-winning, critical-darling, academic-but-still-readable treatments of how stories can save us. 

Jonathan Rogers is the kind of writer that you’re always telling other people about. His books are the ones that you’ll want to give as gifts to your friends. You know how, when you go to the used bookstore, there’s that author whose books you grab, even though you already own them (because you know you’ll want to give them away)? That’s Jonathan Rogers.

Oh, and he also has this weird thing about alligators.

by his nemesis, John Barber, who holds the world record for being the greatest human being on the planet for the most days in a row. The record is still being added to daily.