Featured Speakers

Reverend Andrew Lazo

An internationally-known speaker and writer specializing in C.S. Lewis and the Inklings, Andrew was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in January 2023 and is married to author and speaker Dr. Christin Ditchfield Lazo. Andrew earned his Masters in Modern British Literature from Rice University, where he was a Jacob K. Javits fellow in the Humanities. He is a frequent speaker around the U.S. and U.K. and has written several articles on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. He is the author of Mere Christians: Inspiring Encounters with C.S. Lewis, editor of a previously unknown book by C.S. Lewis, Early Prose Joy, and has been working on a long-awaited study of Till We Have Faces for nearly two decades. Andrew also cohosts the Pints with Jack podcast alongside fellow featured speaker David Bates.

Visit Andrew’s Website

Dr. Christin Ditchfield Lazo

An author, speaker, and Bible teacher, Christin is a scholar of traditional Christianity and a Certified Labyrinth Facilitator with a master’s degree in Bible and Theology and a doctorate in Spiritual Formation. She is the author of more than 80 books and Bible studies on various subjects and for a wide variety of readers, including devotional and inspirational books for women, books on C.S. Lewis, books and Bible studies on Spiritual Formation, and books for children and their families. Her most well-known book is A Family Guide to Narnia: Biblical Truths in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. Christin has loved C.S. Lewis ever since she first read The Chronicles of Narnia as a child and met her husband, Reverend Andrew Lazo, during a radio interview about the book Women and C.S. Lewis, which they both contributed chapters.

Visit Christin’s Website

Abigail Santamaria

A 2024-2025 Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, Abigail is the author of Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis and is currently at work on I Am Meg: The Life of Madeleine L’Engle, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Past awards include a MacDowell Fellowship (2023), an American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant (2023), a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar fellowship (2022), a Sustainable Arts Foundation award (2021), and a Leon Levy Center for Biography fellowship (2019). Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, Literary Hub, and Christianity Today, among other publications. Abigail earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. 

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David Bates

An English Software Engineer, David moved to the United States in 2008, settling in San Diego. He met Matt Bush at a party, and, discovering a mutual love of C. S. Lewis, they began a local C.S. Lewis reading group and a few months later launched the Pints With Jack podcast. In 2020, Andrew Lazo first appeared on the show as a guest, but soon joined as a regular co-host. During the COVID pandemic, David married his wife, Marie, and moved to La Crosse, Wisconsin, where they now have three children together.

Visit the Pints with Jack Website