Dana Trent | |
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![]() Trent at the launch of Between Two Trailers at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC. 2024. | |
Born | Judith Dana Lewman April 11, 1981 Arcadia, California, U.S. |
Alma mater | |
Occupations |
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Years active | 2013–present |
Website | jdanatrent |
Dana Trent (née Lewman / lumən / ; born April 11, 1981), known professionally as J. Dana Trent, is an American author, teacher, and minister.[1] Trent is a full-time humanities faculty member at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina.[2] Trent's debut memoir from Penguin Random House, Between Two Trailers, received a starred review from Library Journal.[3] Kirkus Reviews calls it a "A powerfully intimate look into the struggles of American poverty and mental illness."[4] Publisher's Weekly compared Trent's work to Jeannette Walls and Tara Westover.[5]
She is the author of four books: Saffron Cross: The Unlikely Story of How a Christian Minister Married a Hindu Monk (2013),[6] For Sabbath's Sake: Embracing Your Need for Rest, Worship, and Community (2017),[7] One Breath at a Time: A Skeptic's Guide to Christian Meditation (2019),[8] and Dessert First: Preparing for Death While Savoring Life (2019).[9]
Trent's father, Richard Lewman, was a recreational therapist diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.[10][11][12] Her mother had mental illness too. The couple met in a locked inpatient psychiatric institute four years before she was born.[11] Her parents followed televangelist Robert Schuller to Los Angeles before she was born to be near the Crystal Cathedral.[11] They hoped Schuller's message of self-healing and self-empowerment would allow them to conceive a child. About a year later, Trent was born in Los Angeles and named for the Indiana town where her father was from.[11]
Trent was born in Los Angeles, and moved to Dana, Indiana as an infant. According to Religion News Service, Trent grew up in a trailer in the small town of Dana, Indiana, the daughter of parents who sold and used drugs.[13] Trent’s father trained her in the drug business; her street name was “Budgie.”[11] The name is a label given to parakeets.[14] She lived in Indiana until age six, when her parents divorced and she moved with her mother to North Carolina.[1] Trent attended Reidsville High School in Reidsville, North Carolina, and won a Rockingham Community College sponsored speech contest for high schoolers in 1996.[15] She was the 1998 winner of the “I Dare You Leadership Award.”[16]
Trent first publicly shared her drug-trafficking upbringing in “Breaking Good,” a podcast produced in conjunction with the Lilly Endowment-funded Louisville Institute.[11] Trent is writing a book version of the podcast that will tell the story in greater depth.[11] Her agent is Mark Tauber.[17]
Trent is one of only 2,500 women total ordained in the Southern Baptist tradition.[18] She is publicly critical of Beth Moore, criticizing Moore's stance on complementarianism.[19] On State of Belief with Welton Gaddy, Trent questioned Moore's apology and timing of leaving the Southern Baptist Convention.[20] Trent says that Moore was unwilling to abandon complementarianism all together, suggesting that Moore believes there are circumstances in which complementarianism is appropriate and that Moore benefits from a "neutral posture" on complementarianism.[19]
Trent is one of the few female ordained Southern Baptist ministers in the United States. She graduated from Duke Divinity School with a Master of Divinity in 2006.[21] After graduating from Duke at the age of 25, she served as a UNC Health intensive care resident chaplain where she worked with terminal patients and bore witness to 200 deaths in one year.[22] Publishers Weekly called Trent's fourth book, Dessert First, “hilarious and poignant.”[22] According to Englewood Review of Books, Dessert First decidedly is not a treatise expounding traditional Christian views on death. Trent’s focus instead is starting the conversation about death early and often, regardless of the reader’s faith background.[23]
Trent married Fred Eaker in July 2010 after meeting him on eHarmony.[24]