Summer’s here, and we’re reading new books from three writers: Molly McCully Brown, Marie Mutsuki Mockett, and Amy Jo Burns.

Their work falls into different genres: memoir, first-person reporting, and fiction. But they’re linked by an abiding interest in God, communal religious practice, and the strangeness of American life at the margins.

They speak with managing editor Kate Lucky, who also reflects on her time at Commonweal, a place where she has found not just intellectual and literary fellowship but a true sense of community and of “being known.”

For further reading, three Commonweal pieces, all by Kate Lucky: