Kristy Nabhan-Warren is a professor of religion at the University of Iowa. She has written widely on the role of the Virgin Mary in Latino cultures. Her research focuses on Catholic studies. She is the author of Meatpacking America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland.

Lesley Hazleton is a former psychologist and journalist and is the author of Mary: A Flesh-and-Blood Biography of the Virgin Mother. Hazleton lives in Seattle and describes herself as having “deep roots in both Judaism and Catholicism.”

Read a May 23, 2003, National Catholic Reporter review that discusses four new books on Mary.

Read a Dec. 1, 2002, Christianity Today interview with evangelical theologians J.I. Packer and Thomas Oden about the appeal of the Virgin Mary.

Read a Dec. 1, 2003, Christianity Today essay by Timothy George about the social importance of the Virgin Mary.

Read a Dec. 3, 2007, Los Angeles Times story about the growing appeal of the patroness of Mexico.

Read a Dec. 4, 2007, Catholic News Service story about the growing appeal of the patroness of Mexico.

Read a Dec. 12, 2007, New York Times story about the growing popularity of a theatrical version of the Guadalupe story that is playing beyond the Los Angeles cathedral where it began in 2002.

See the entry on the Virgin Mary in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, edited by William H. Swatos Jr.