Author Q&A With Chelsea Kim Long
Chelsea Kim Long is a neighborhood pastor, lay theologian, meditation teacher, and writer. Her debut book, Faithfully Dissident Daughters: Reclaiming Christian Womanhood Beyond Patriarchy (Westminster John Knox Press, September 8, 2026), with a foreword by Dr. Christena Cleveland, braids personal narrative with theology and Christian history to argue that the image of God is expansive enough to hold women’s full embodied lives. She lives in San Diego with her husband and three children. Meet Chelsea:
You are an author, but is it your day job? I always say my dream job is to make things that help people. Right now, that looks like writing, creating social media content, working on my forthcoming podcast, and some freelance digital marketing and property management. I’m also a mom of three, so my days are full, and I’m grateful that so much of that time goes to work I actually love.
Did you always want to be an author? I’ve always been a writer, but I didn’t grow up dreaming of publishing a book. Having one out in the world feels like a dream come true; it’s just a more recent dream.
What is your most recent book, and what inspired you to write it?
My debut is Faithfully Dissident Daughters: Reclaiming Christian Womanhood Beyond Patriarchy. I’d enjoyed many books written by people examining and leaving fundamentalist belief systems, and I always closed them feeling a little let down, because what I wanted to know was whether I could keep my Christian identity and still have a more liberating faith. I also had never read an account of motherhood and deconstruction happening at the same time, and I knew I wasn’t the only one living that, so I wrote mine.
How do you hope your book will uplift readers? Faithfully Dissident Daughters invites anyone who has felt unseen or diminished by their faith tradition to reimagine what it means to love God and embrace themselves. I hope my book gives people permission to accept their full selves: body, emotion, intuition, and all.
How did writing a book help your career take off? Ask me in a year! The book isn’t out yet, so I don’t have the after picture. What I’m hoping is that it opens up more room to do this work with women, and with people inside the church who want to build spaces that are genuinely safe and welcoming for everyone.
What advice would you give someone wanting to succeed as an author? Two things: trust your vision and sense of purpose for the book and build the tenacity to carry it. The vision gets you to start. The tenacity gets you through everything after that.
How do you handle setbacks and criticism? I have a lot of practices that hold me up, including regular therapy, spiritual direction, yoga, meditation, and quality time with people I love. Setbacks come regardless, which is exactly why tenacity and self-trust matter. Criticism inevitably comes too. Most of the time I’ve found that someone’s judgment of me says more about them than it does about me. If it’s a stranger on the internet, I can let it go pretty quickly and go check in with someone who knows me deeply.
Being an author today is like running a business. How do you manage your publicity and social media and maintain engagement with readers? It is a lot to manage. I’ve worked in digital marketing and content creation for 10 years, and I’ve found it way more difficult to do for my own work than for a client. I try to consolidate the time I spend creating and be strategic about posting. Getting clear on why I’m showing up on social media helps too, otherwise it’s way too easy to spend all your time in the doom scroll and pretend you’re working.
How do you structure your day and make time for writing? Every day looks different, but my best writing hours are early, so if I’m drafting, I’ll write first thing with my coffee before the house wakes up. Most of my work is flexible, so I can build the day around deadlines and my own priorities.
What book uplifts you? Oh, so many! I read every day and across most genres. A recent book I read with my neighborhood book club was “Heart the Lover” by Lily King. It broke me open and put me back together all at once, which is the kind of uplift I trust most: one that doesn’t skip the hard parts.
Anything else you’d like to share with your readers? If you love a book, find a way to tell the author. Too many days feel like shouting into the void, especially with how crowded social media is. Every author I know would be delighted to hear from a reader whose book they reached.
Connect with Chelsea and grab a copy of her book through her website.
