About

Kaya Oakes is the author of six books, most recently including Not So Sorry: Abusers, False Apologies and the Limits of Forgiveness (Broadleaf Books, 2024), The Defiant Middle: How Women Claim Life’s In Betweens to Remake the World (Broadleaf Books, 2021), The Nones Are Alright (Orbis Books, 2015) and Radical Reinvention (Counterpoint Press, 2012).

Kaya’s essays and journalism have appeared in The Revealer, The New Republic, Slate, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Sojourners, National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, Religion Dispatches, Tricycle, On Being, America, and many other publications. She was the co-founder of the arts and culture magazine Kitchen Sink, and is currently on the editorial board of the website Killing the Buddha. Kaya received Religion News Association’s award for best commentary in 2021. She has appeared on many podcasts, on the CBC, and on NPR.

Kaya has spoken on topics related to culture, religion, writing and feminism at Fordham University, Syracuse University, Creighton University, DePaul University, Notre Dame University, Villanova University, University of Southern California, San Francisco State, Cal State University East Bay, St. Mary’s College, University of the Pacific, The Glen Workshop at St. John’s College in Santa Fe and The Search for Meaning Festival at Seattle University. She has also spoken and led writing workshops in church basements, community centers, homeless shelters, and in senior centers. She was one of a select number of international journalists who traveled to the Rome and the Vatican in 2016 to study writing on religion in politically turbulent times.

Since 1999, Kaya has been a faculty member in the College Writing Programs at UC Berkeley, where she teaches creative nonfiction, cultural criticism, composition, and research writing. She has also been a visiting writer in nonfiction at several schools. Kaya was born and raised in Oakland, California, where she still lives.