Jennifer Michael Hecht is the author of The Wonder Paradox: Awe, Poetry, and the Meaningful Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), as well as Doubt: A History (Harper) and Stay (Yale). Her poetry books are Who Said (Copper Canyon), Funny (Wisconsin University), and The Next Ancient World, (Tupelo). Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, The Missouri Review, Tin House, and The Kenyon Review. Hecht holds a Ph.D. in the history of science and culture from Columbia University. She has written for The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Politico, and Vox. As an atheist who believes in poetry she has delivered lectures at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Cal Tech, Columbia University, The Zen Mountain Monastery, Temple Israel, Saint Bart’s Episcopal Church of NYC, and has been featured on many radio programs, including On Being with Krista Tippet, Leonard Lopate Show, the BBC, Talk of the Nation, and Brian Lehrer. She has appeared on Hardball on MSNBC, the Discovery Channel, and The Morning Show.