Penny Linsenmayer of Houston, Texas, helped organize Nimbus 2003, the first international symposium about Harry Potter, held in July 2003. Linsenmayer founded the Harry Potter for Grownups Internet discussion group, which has nearly 7,000 members.

The Rev. Francis Bridger is dean of the Diocese of Brechin in Scotland. He was formerly ecclesiastical professor of Anglican studies and executive director of the Center for Anglican Communion Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. He is the author of A Charmed Life: The Spirituality of Potterworld.

Robert L. Brown is a professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has written about Buddhism, asceticism, health and the body.

Jill Dubisch is a professor of anthropology at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. She has written about religious aspects of the health food movement in a journal about magic, witchcraft and the supernatural.

Marleen Williams is a clinical professor of counseling psychology at Brigham Young University, a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints school in Provo, Utah. She specializes in women’s mental health and focuses her research on eating disorders, depression, trauma and spirituality in women. She says religious beliefs that see the body as a God-given gift […]

Stacey Kole Shetler is a former Miss Arizona USA (1998) who speaks to young people about how her relationship with Jesus Christ helped her battle an eating disorder. She says anorexia is not uncommon in Christian households because it is the “good girl’s syndrome.” It does not involve a taboo substance, such as alcohol or drugs, […]

Mark Roehling is an assistant professor of labor and industrial relations at Michigan State University in Lansing. In 1999 he published a study that found that overweight and obese people were discriminated against – often openly – in the workplace.

Tami Coyne and Karen Weissman are known as “The Spiritual Chicks” and are authors of The Spiritual Chicks Question Everything: Learn to Risk, Release and Soar (Red Wheel, 2003). In the book, they discuss whether God loves fat people and conclude that God does. Both Chicks live in New York City.

Carol Showalter is the author of 3D: Diet, Discipline and Discipleship (Paraclete Press, 2002) and is a member of the Community of Jesus. She is the founder of the 3D Plan, a Christian lifestyle group.