Okay... time to trivialize my existence, scratch the surface, and boil myself down to a few details...
My name is Jeffrey Overstreet. God has conspired to turn me into a writer, a grateful husband, a contented resident of Shoreline (north end of Seattle, Washington), and a trouble-prone follower of Christ. The joy I know is all due to God's grace, and the opportunities I enjoy leave me humbled, grateful, and rather burdened with a sense of responsibility.
I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and attended Portland Christian Schools from K-12. My father was a teacher there during that time, and my mother has worked as a teacher too... so I grew up in a world of educators.
My younger brother Jason is some kind of singer/songwriter/composer genius. He has a singing group called Rescue that continues to amaze and bless audiences wherever God leads them. I'm proud of that guy.
I'm married to a poet named Anne, who comes from Roswell, New Mexico. (Insert alien-related joke here.) We just celebrated our 10th anniverary. She works as a gardener and a freelance editor, but her poetry is what really blows my mind. Well, that and the fact that I can't believe a gorgeous woman like her decided to spend her life with a crazy guy like me.
I've been writing books since before I started kindergarten. I think the first one was called "The Sea Monster," and it was full of scribbled drawings of a massive, fanged beast trying to swallow a little stick-figure man. I'm not sure what that represented, or if I identified with the man or the beast.But, thanks to a whirlwind of events in 2005-06, and a few meetings that could only have happened through God's wild imagination, I'm now the author of Through a Screen Darkly: Looking Closer at Beauty, Truth, and Evil in the Movies (coming from Regal Books in January 2007). It's a book about art, faith, and the way that a good movie can change the world. It's a memoir of sorts, but also a collection of meditations on great movies, and I include some excerpts from memorable interviews with filmmakers and movie stars.
Want to be among the first to read it? Pre-order today!
I'm also a novelist, and my first novel, Auralia's Colors, is being published by Random House in Sept. 07.
Since my early teen years, when I became a fan of Roger Ebert, I've been writing about all of the movies I see and the music I hear. My film and music reviews are located at LookingCloser.org , and I'm also:
- a weekly film columnist and critic at ChristianityTodayMovies.com . a film critic for Seattle Pacific University's Response Magazine , Risen Magazine and, occasionally, Paste Magazine .
Somehow, I manage to work a full-time job as a writer/editor/project manager in University Communications at Seattle Pacific University.
I guess that'll do for starters. Any questions?
And what are YOU all about?