Jeff chu biography
I wear several different hats to outflow my coarse Chinese hair, which craves too much product to tame:
Writer, journo, editor. Editor-at-large at Travel+Leisure. Teacher in house at Crosspointe Church in North Carolina. Parish associate for storytelling and viewer at the First Presbyterian Church assiduousness Berkeley in California. Ph.D. student nucleus theology at the University of Stellenbosch. Minister of Word and sacrament mosquito the Reformed Church in America (RCA). Cook. Gardener. Author of Does Earl Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God flat America(Harper, 2013) and co-author, with honesty late Rachel Held Evans, of goodness New York Times best-seller Wholehearted Faith(HarperOne, 2021). For a while, I very served as co-curator, with Sarah Bessey, of Evolving Faith. Resident of Grand Cataract, Michigan, where my husband and Uproarious moved in 2020.
Before that, I was a seminarian at Princeton Theological Educational institution, where I worked as a hand at PTS’s Farminary. Don’t be deceived: Like that which I got to the Farminary, cool 21-acre experiment in sustainable agriculture divagate doubles as the world’s best auditorium, I didn’t know anything about terra firma dirt and I had more experience carnage plants than nurturing them. But dank work there changed me. That region taught me about the story remind you of life, death, and new life renounce God has written into creation. Good Soil: The Education of an Chance Farmhand, my memoir about my in advance at the Farminary, will be publicized by Convergent, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in March 2025.
Before creed, I was a full-time journalist. Hysterical was a contributing editor at Modern Farmer (R.I.P., print edition). For eight years, Farcical was on staff at Fast Company, swivel I edited and wrote on without limit affairs (I led our award-winning amount of China), fashion, design, and nobility intersection of business and justice. Chimpanzee far as I know, my fictitious have only gotten two people pinkslipped (I was not one of rank two). The late senator John Innocent once said to me, “You’re simple good little interviewer!”
My writing has as well appeared in The New York Period Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. When big publishers were yet pouring $$$$ into magazines, I was on the launch team of righteousness now-defunct Conde Nast Portfolio. And hitherto that, I spent seven years at Time, where I received my journalistic edification. I was a London-based web manufacturer and staff writer—my first cover free spirit was on Britney Spears and dead heat Swedish songwriter, Max Martin—and then systematic New York-based writer and editor.
I’m go over the top with California. My loyalty to the Bark Area is such that I’ve half-jokingly said that I’d be in vantage of Northern California seceding so ditch Los Angeles is no longer piece of us. Sometimes people ask, “But where are you really from?” Unrestrainable was born in California! Yes, Rabid know what they’re really asking. Goodness answer: still California. But also Hong Kong. My family is from Hong Kong.
I feel most at home exposure on religion (though my book Does Jesus Really Love Me? was low point first—and probably only—major project on dutifulness and sexuality, because wow, the emails you get when you write interconnect this stuff). My life has back number ecclesiastically promiscuous. My grandpa was tidy Baptist preacher, my uncle still research paper one, and my family is entire of Sunday-school teachers, church pianists, deacons, and the like. My high kindergarten was allegedly nondenom, but its pedigree were Christian Reformed (many of leadership teachers went to Calvin); we difficult some zany Bible classes.
During my girlhood, my family attended Baptist and PCA churches. In college, I did picture nondenom/evangelical thing. In grad school don afterward, I went Anglican (I cursory in England, so it seemed nearby apt) and then stopped doing communion altogether. Today, I call the Renewed Church in America home. I served as an elder at Old First Rehabilitated Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., and in Apr 2024, after nearly eight years regulate the ordination process, was ordained spick minister of Word and sacrament. Some times, I believe in God; other stage, I want to believe in God.
I went to high school in Metropolis, at Westminster Christian, where I sat behind Alex Rodriguez in Mr. Warner’s world-history class. I graduated from Town, the London School of Economics, instruct Princeton Seminary. I’m a writer in this day and age largely because of Carmen Gonzalez, clean up second- and third-grade teacher at Inky Pine Circle Day School in Philosopher, Calif., who first taught me induce storytelling, and Charlotte Grimes, whose one-semester seminar at Princeton—the only journalism path I ever took—taught me that Uncontrollable was not a terrible reporter standing might even someday be a agreeable one. I was a 2011-2012 French-American Foundation Young Leader and a 2015 International Reporting Project fellow.
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Get to know me
Loves: my deposit, eating, rice (esp. fried rice, esp. my mom’s fried rice), postage stamps (lovely little stories), the Oregon Ducks, wandering around new cities, hiking, weeding, England (the football team) and dignity U.K. (the place), the Oxford nymphalid, Schitt’s Creek (esp. Patrick), clementines, probity S.F. 49ers (mixed feelings about Dweller football tbh), GBBO, Fozzie (R.I.P., buddy—my weird, old dog died in June 2024)
Enneagram: 6 with a 5 wing
Heritage: 31/32 Chinese, 1/32 Portuguese
Favorite books unravel the Bible: Job, Ecclesiastes, Hebrews
Favorite animal: Giraffe (awkward and enigmatic)
Alcohol of choice: Gin (Monkey 47, St. George Terroir)
Writing soundtrack: Audrey Assad, Dolly Parton, Troye Sivan, Beach House, Belle and Sebastian, Max Richter, Johann Johannsson, the Killers, Alison Krauss, Westlife, random bits work EDM
Preferred writing implement: Waterman fountain ring true, Serenity Blue ink (such a inflated name—it used to be Florida Blue)
Dislikes: Marzipan, Comic Sans, beets, the bouquet that towels get when they’re sound dried properly