Kathleen Norris is the author of Dakota: A Spiritual Geography and The Cloister Walk. A married Presbyterian woman, who is an oblate at a monastery in North Dakota, she is both insider and outsider to the monastic tradition, as well as a lay preacher in her Presbyterian church in her small town in South Dakota. She has given sermons throughout the country, and is also an award-winning poet whose most recent collection is entitled Little Girls in Church.