Michelle Syba talks with Pamela about speaking in tongues, getting slain in the spirit, and why she is surprised that Richard Dawkins is surprised at the tenacity of religion.

Michelle became a lapsed Pentecostal before she got her PhD from Harvard in English and began teaching literature and religion in the college’s creative writing program. She left the faith not because she disagreed with the doctrine but because she felt herself more moved by Middlemarch than the Bible. In 2018, after attending one of the Banff Centre’s writing workshops, she started working on the stories that became the collection called End Times.

Listen to our conversation to hear how Michelle wrote this book while grappling with a culture she still didn’t fully understand.