Canadian academic and writer (born 1980)
Kate Bowler (born 1980) is a Canadian academic and writer from Winnipeg, Manitoba.[1] Bowler is currently an associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School.[2]
Career
Bowler's first book entitled Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (Oxford University Press, 2013) was published in 2013.[3] In 2018 she published Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I've Loved) (Random House, 2018),[4][5][6][7][8][9][10] which was a New York Times hardcover nonfiction best seller.[11]
Her third book,The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities (Princeton Press), was published in 2019.[12] Bowler also hosts a podcast entitled Everything Happens[13]
Her memoir, No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear)(Penguin, 2021), was published in 2021, which was followed by a devotional called Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection (Random House, 2022), which she co-authored with her podcast producer Jessica Richie.[14][15] In 2023, Bowler and Richie co-authored The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days (Random House, Random House Canada, 2023).[16][17]
Early life and education
Bowler was born in 1980[18] in London[19] where her father was pursuing a PhD in history at King's College London.[20] She grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba and received her Bachelor of Arts at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota, and her Master of Arts in Religion at Yale Divinity School. She completed her PhD at Duke University which focuses on the history of prosperity gospel in the United States.[21]
Personal life
Bowler married Toban Penner, her high school classmate, in 2002. Together they have a son, Zach.[22]
In 2015, she was diagnosed with stage IV cancer,[22] which was the basis of her memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I've Loved).
