Jesse James DeConto

Jesse James DeConto decided to be a writer after hitting under .100 in his first two years of Babe Ruth baseball and realizing he was never going to play for the Red Sox. He thought he might write about sports. Then he studied philosophy and started to think he might have something profound to say. It turns out, he rarely does. But other people do, and he likes to tell their stories. He experiments with telling his own through songs, essays and a spiritual memoir, This Littler Light: Some Thoughts on NOT Changing the World, due out on Cascade Press in 2014. He spent 11 years as a newspaper reporter and editor with the Xenia (Ohio) Daily Gazette, the Portsmouth (N.H.) Herald and the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C. He now works as a contributing editor for Prism magazine and a regular contributor to The Christian Century. He studied philosophy at Cedarville College, journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill and theology at Duke Divinity School. He writes, sings and performs indie pop with his band, The Pinkerton Raid. He walks his youngest daughter to and from school in the vibrant Walltown section of Durham, N.C. He and his wife enjoy Durham’s burgeoning music and locavore scenes and a loyal, creative community of friends. Their oldest daughter is braving middle school.