Christina Kukuk is author of the book Loving What Doesn’t Last: An Adoration of the Body, drawn from her own experiences as a  pastor learning to listen to her body. An ordained minister in the United Church of Christ since 2005, she currently works in hospice and wildfire recovery chaplaincy. She received her Master of Divinity from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and is currently working toward board certification as a clinical chaplain.

A writer and pastor in Ohio, Minnesota, and now Southern Oregon, Kukuk is a fan of anatomy textbooks, “tissue recovery specialists,” and more than one small-town family funeral director. While as a pastor and chaplain she has often accompanied bodies into places others do not, Kukuk writes primarily as a person who, like any of us, inhabits a body and wonders about its place in the universe.

Kukuk began her first career in high school, writing news briefs, wedding announcements and obituaries for the local daily newspaper after classes. She later graduated from journalism school at Kent State University and went on to work as a business reporter for the Akron Beacon Journal, a Pulitzer-Prize winning metro daily newspaper then owned by Knight-Ridder Corp. Her poems, essays and articles have appeared in Northern Ohio Live, Belt Magazine, Bearings Online, Geez Magazine, The Christian Century, and Spirituality and Health, among others.

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