Barbara Child began her professional life teaching English at Kent State University, where she barely escaped the National Guard’s gunfire on May 4, 1970, gunfire that took the lives of four students, wounded nine more, and changed many lives, including hers. She became an attorney, first practicing poverty law and then teaching as a plain legal language advocate in law schools and among state legislative drafting bureaus. In 1996, she became a Unitarian Universalist minister. Retired now from full-time ministry, she consults with churches in transition and serves on a national support team for ministers coaching other ministers in difficult circumstances. She is what she calls a “writing fool,” also happily devoting her time to editing collections of essays and meditations for use in transitional ministry. She lives in a log cabin in the woods of Brown County, Indiana.
