After releasing her third book last April, bestselling Christian author Shauna Niequist is promoting her book at events around the country this Christmas season. Her latest book, Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table, focuses on the intersection between faith, family, food and being present around the table. I interviewed Shauna by phone about her latest book and the philosophy that inspired it.

Kalli Thommen: How did you get started as a writer?
Shauna Niequist: I have always been a reader. Books have always been my favorite thing. I had to have books taken away from me when I was little so I could go to sleep. I was a literature major in college, and I think for every literature major, at a certain point you either want to write or teach. But I thought I would just go ahead and get a job in ministry because it’s what I grew up doing. Several years into my job in ministry, someone gave me an opportunity to write some scripts for a film project. Ultimately, that project didn’t go anywhere at all. But it got me writing again, and it sort of got those muscles back in shape again.

KT: How do you integrate your faith with your writing?
SN: I’m one of those people who doesn’t totally believe in that question. Your faith has to be integrated into every part of your life. So it affects the way I read, the way I eat, the way I interact with the other parents at my kid’s preschool, the way I do everything. So I write in a such a way that it demonstrates my faith with what I hope is the same kind of fluidity that a person would observe my faith as being in daily life.

There are so many great writers writing for Christians, but I have this little group of friends who either weren’t Christians or didn’t feel totally seen and understood by the Christian books that people were recommending to them. Those were the people that I held in mind, those still are the people that I hold in my mind while I write. Either for people who have stopped going to church or who have never felt comfortable there, I want to be a voice that builds a bridge back and says “you might find space here even though you didn’t feel like that before.”

KT: What inspired you to write “Bread & Wine”?
SN: I love to talk about what people eat and why and how and what traditions they carry with them and what flavors go together and why that reminds them of different people or places or times. So I said to myself, “I would love to read a book about the connection between faith and life around the table.” So that’s where it all started.

KT: What do you hope readers will get out of “Bread & Wine”?
SN: I hope that they invite people around their tables. It’s so meaningful to me that people are actually opening their doors and gathering around their table. When someone who doesn’t cook and doesn’t entertain and doesn’t gather people around their table says, “I tiptoed in and I made risotto for the first time or I baked a loaf of bread for the first time,” that is so exciting.

KT: In your book, you talk a lot about taking time to slow down and be present at the table. What advice would you give to busy college students trying to do this?
SN: I totally remember being so busy in college and now that I look back on it, you’re never going to be less busy than you are right now. I can’t even describe to you how much different your time feels when you’re married with two kids [and] with a career.

Your calendar demonstrates your values. If you set aside a Thursday night to gather, even in a dorm room, even in a park, even over take-out tacos, but you decide at the last minute that you don’t have time for that, you’re demonstrating your values. But if you all can, build a rhythm of life together that says I would not miss this Thursday night and take-out tacos in the park for anything because I trust that the space we create there is sacred.

KT: Can you give a little of the backstory behind your bacon-wrapped dates recipe?
SN: That’s one of my favorite recipes for several reasons. One of them is because people think it sounds so terrible until they try it. If they sound disgusting to you, I totally get it, but just try it one time and you will be converted and then people will require you to bring them everywhere. [Second], it’s just assembly and an oven. You could just roll those up on your desk in your dorm room and just put them in the oven and people will fall in love with you.