Shemaiah Gonzalez

Shemaiah González is a writer with degrees in English Literature (BA), Intercultural Ministry (MAPS), and Creative Non-Fiction Writing (MFA). She thrives in the places where storytelling, art, literature, and faith intersect. Her work has appeared in America Magazine, Image Journal’s Good Letters, Ekstasis, The Curator, Loyola Press, and many other publications. A Los Angeles native, she now makes her home in Seattle with her husband and their two teen sons.

Her writing has been recognized widely. In 2018, Pope Francis selected her story about her college English professor for inclusion in his book Sharing the Wisdom of Time. She was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize for her flash nonfiction essay Dios Mio in Whale Road Review, where she later joined the editorial team as a CNF peer reviewer. She also served as a contributing prose editor for The Curator Magazine in 2021.

Shemaiah’s popular Northwest Catholic column, “God in the Ordinary,” received an Honorable Mention Catholic Press Award for Best Spiritual Life Column in 2021 and Third Place in 2023. She has presented at national gatherings, including the 2022 Catholic Imagination Conference, where she shared her biography project on beloved Northwest writer Brian Doyle. In 2024, she delivered the keynote address, “May We Never Lose Our Sense of Wonder,” at the Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature at the University of Dallas.

Her book Undaunted Joy: The Revolutionary Act of Cultivating Delight was published by Zondervan/HarperCollins in April 2025. She is also part of the CNF workshop faculty for the inaugural Winona Christian Writers Conference at Grace College in Summer 2025.

You can learn more about her here: Shemaiah Gonzalez