Just for Fun

  I am so happy to announce this book deal for debut author Amanda Held Opelt. Amanda’s a gifted writer in addition to her considerable talents as a musician, singer & songwriter. In her first book, she explores grief and the rituals people have used throughout history to cope. With her talent for storytelling, this…

Gardner Literary is proud to represent author Karen González! Congrats, Karen, on your new book contract.

  Gardner Literary is proud to represent debut author Lyvonne Briggs as she signs her first publishing contract!   Congrats, Lyvonne!

  We make thousands of decisions, and while most of them are relatively simple, we can get stuck in the larger, life-altering decisions, leading to frustration, anxiety, and confusion. “It would be so much easier if life just came with a road map!” Life is full of twists and turns, the unexpected and the unforeseen.…

  This beautiful book from debut author Kat Armas is out in the world, and I’m excited for you to read it! What if some of our greatest theologians weren’t theologians at all? “Abuelita Faith” tells the story of unnamed and overlooked theologians in society and in the Bible–mothers, grandmothers, sisters, and daughters–whose survival, strength,…

  When Christian singer and speaker Staci Frenes learned her teenage daughter was gay, she found her dreams for the future—along with her lifelong faith—collapsing around her. Coming to terms with a new reality was an invitation to make room for new things: uncertainty, hope in the midst of loss, awkward and tough conversations, an…

Excited to announce this January release!! I feel like I’ve been waiting forever to tell you about this book. Candice Benbow writes about Black spirituality and Black womanhood like no one else. She draws you in from the first page and doesn’t let you go. Her personality shines through and she balances depth and humor…

“The Weight of Memory” a novel by Shawn Smucker “A resonant allegory about forgiveness and faith. Fans of James Rubart will want to take a look.” -Publishers Weekly “Smucker crafts beautiful sentences and haunting characters that immerse readers in a world where anything is possible but not everything is real.” -Library journal I was hooked…

  It’s a personal decision, but there are a few good reasons writers enter contests. First, the prize money! That’s always nice. But what if you don’t win? Was your time spent entering the contest wasted? Entering the right contests can be helpful for writers of both fiction and non-fiction. The feedback is often invaluable.…

This is an incredibly exciting and yet bittersweet announcement! We’ve been waiting so long to tell you about this beautiful book that Rachel Held Evans wrote. Brilliant children’s book author Matthew Paul Turner finished and fully realized it, along with our gifted illustrator Ying Hui Tan. It’s the fulfillment of one of Rachel’s many aspirations,…

There’s plenty of advice out there about how to make the most of a conference. But what about those of us who are introverts? We may have trouble even wanting to attend a conference, let alone making the most of one! Potential for awkward social situations is around every corner. Oh, how we envy our extrovert friends!…

I’ve noticed that when entering the writing and publishing journey, people have a lot of assumptions that aren’t necessarily true. Here’s a little true/false quiz to pinpoint some assumptions you may have. Do they need to be challenged?   True or False: The best time of day to write is the morning. In order to…

We all have our daily challenges, and I think most of us have certain things we struggle with over and over. My biggest day-to-day difficulty is the sheer number of things that need to get done. Sometimes the to-do list is so long, I get paralyzed. So I have a sticky note right by my computer. It…

When the humorist James Thurber was writing for New Yorker editor Harold Ross in the 1930s and 1940s, the two men often had very strong words about commas. It is pleasant to picture the scene: two hard-drinking alpha males in trilbies smacking a big desk and barking at each other over the niceties of punctuation.…