Dominic Preziosi joined Commonweal in 2012 as digital editor and has been its editor since 2019. He is also the host of The Commonweal Podcast. Dominic was educated at Fordham University, Brooklyn College, and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Lisa. @DominicPreziosi
Matthew Boudway joined the Commonweal staff in 2006. He grew up in Arizona and was educated at Yale, Oxford, and Boston University. He has worked as a farmhand, a bookseller, and an English teacher in France, and was for two years an editor at First Things. He lives in Harlem.
Regina Munch joined the Commonweal staff in 2016. Originally from the Philadelphia area, she studied humanities at Villanova University and received her master’s degree in history at Boston College. Her work has been published in the Progressive, America, Civil Eats, Plough, and elsewhere. She lives in Wayne, Pennsylvania.
Griffin Oleynick arrived at Commonweal in January 2018 as the magazine’s first John Garvey Writing Fellow and joined the staff in May 2018.
Alexander Stern joined Commonweal in 2022 as features editor. He received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University and his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of The Fall of Language: Benjamin and Wittgenstein on Meaning (Harvard University Press, 2019), and his writing has appeared in Aeon, The Hedgehog Review, and The New York Times, among other outlets. @AlexWStern
Isabella Simon joined Commonweal in 2019. She was raised in Chicago and graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in English. She currently lives in Manhattan.
Miles Doyle joined Commonweal in 2022 as special projects editor. A graduate of Fordham University, he earned his MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco. Before joining Commonweal, he was a developmental editor, most recently at HarperCollins. He lives in Washington Heights, New York, with his wife and their two young children.
Kendall Gunter joined Commonweal in 2022. He grew up in Virginia and now lives in Manhattan.
Ellen Koneck is the executive director at Commonweal, a role she began in fall 2022. But she has worn other hats at Commonweal prior to this position, including as an editorial assistant, a community and events manager, and a board member. Before this role, Ellen was an adjunct lecturer in Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart University, acquisitions editor for Anselm Academic, and the head writer for Springtide, a research institute examining trends in the religious lives of young people. Ellen has her Master of Arts in religion from Yale Divinity School and sits on the advisory board at Liturgical Press. She has appeared on various podcasts and has published in America, Commonweal, Plough, Reflections, and elsewhere. Ellen lives in Minnesota with her husband and two sons. @ellen_koneck
James Hannan joined Commonweal in 2010. Prior to that, he held senior management positions at a number of professional and B2B publishing companies. He was educated at Seton Hall University and the University of Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Rita, have three children and live in New Jersey.
Claudia Avila Cosnahan joined Commonweal in 2019, first as a consultant and project manager, then, in 2021 as Mission and Partnerships Director. She was educated at UCLA and Loyola Marymount University where she received a master’s degree in pastoral theology focusing on US Latinx theology, sociological/cultural context of ministry, and spirituality. She is a pastoral consultant and instructor in adult formation in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and surrounding dioceses and is on the coordinating and research committee for the National Conversation on Shared Parish Life. She has published articles and spiritual reflections in Liturgical Training Publications and Commonweal. Daughter of Mexican immigrants and originally from Fontana, CA, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband. @AvilaCosnahan
Gabriella Wilke joined Commonweal in 2017, first as an intern, then as a staff member in 2018. She is on the Advisory Committee for the Dorothy Day Guild. She studied English at the University of Minnesota, Morris and currently lives in central Minnesota with her husband. @gabriella_wilke
David Sankey is an illustrator and designer based in Jersey City. He has worked with nonprofit organizations, publishers, farmers, literary magazines and arts initiatives. He first worked with Commonweal in 2017, began production of the magazine in 2020, and has created artwork for several covers. @davidsankey
Mollie Wilson O’Reilly joined the Commonweal staff as an editor in 2008, and has been a columnist since 2015. She writes and speaks on culture, religion, and politics, with a particular interest in theater, women in the Church, and the ministry of Pope Francis. Mollie is a graduate of Yale University and lives in Westchester, NY, with her husband and four sons. You can find her @mollieoreilly.bsky.social.
Max Foley-Keene is a doctoral student in political science at Brown University, where he studies political ecology and liberation theology. He is a former Commonweal intern. A proud Maryland native, Max works from Providence. @MaxFoleyKeene
Susanne Washburn has served Commonweal since 1999. Prior to that she spent thirty-six years on Time, the last long stretch as a senior reporter. An English literature major at Albertus Magnus College, she then pursued a Master of Arts degree at New York University. She has published in Stratton and Vermont magazines as well as Commonweal, National Catholic Reporter, and Today's American Catholic. Her Commonweal copyediting is done from her home in Dorset, Vermont. She and her late husband, lawyer Larry Washburn, are the parents of three and grandparents of two.
David Dault edits The Commonweal Podcast, and produces podcasts for clients across the country through his company, Sandburg Media. He hosts the weekly radio show Things Not Seen: Conversations about Culture and Faith and co-hosts The Francis Effect podcast with Fr. Daniel P. Horan and National Catholic Reporter editor Heidi Schlumpf. He is Assistant Professor of Christian Spirituality at the Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Chicago. David is the author of the forthcoming books The Covert Magisterium (Lexington) and The Accessorized Bible (Yale). He lives with his family in Hyde Park, on Chicago's south side. @DaultRadio
Paul Baumann came to Commonweal in 1990 and was editor for fifteen years, 2003-2018. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Monthly, the Columbia Journalism Review, the Chicago Tribune, and other publications. With Patrick Jordan, he is the editor of Commonweal Confronts the Century: Liberal Convictions, Catholic Tradition - Celebrating Seventy-Five Years from the Pages of Commonweal (Touchstone).
Rand Richards Cooper is the author of two works of fiction, The Last to Go and Big As Life. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, GQ, Esquire, the Atlantic, and in Best American Short Stories. He has been Writer-in-Residence at Amherst and Emerson colleges. A longtime contributor to Bon Appétit and the New York Times, Rand lives in Hartford, CT with his wife, Molly, and daughter, Larkin. He is the restaurant critic for the Hartford Courant and has been a film reviewer, book reviewer and essayist for Commonweal for over two decades.
Randy Boyagoda is a novelist, critic, and professor of English at the University of Toronto. He is the author of seven books, including the novels Original Prin and Dante’s Indiana. He lives in Toronto with his wife and their four daughters.
Anthony Domestico is Chair of the Literature Department at Purchase College, SUNY. His book, Poetry and Theology in the Modernist Period, is available from Johns Hopkins University Press. His reviews and essays can be found in the Atlantic, Book Post, the Boston Globe, the Boston Review, and many other places. @tony_domestico
Massimo Faggioli is a professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia). His books and articles have been published in more than ten languages. His most recent publications include the books The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II, co-edited with Catherine Clifford (Oxford, 202) and Theology and Catholic Higher Education: Beyond Our Identity Crisis (Orbis, 2024). He came from Italy to the USA in 2008, and lives with his wife and kids in the Philadelphia area. @MassimoFaggioli
Rita Ferrone is an award-winning writer and an international leader in the field of liturgy and church renewal in the Roman Catholic tradition. She is the author of several books about liturgy, including Liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium (Paulist Press), and Pastoral Guide to Pope Francis’s Desiderio Desideravi (Liturgical Press). Her articles and essays have been translated into eight languages. She brings ot her work a strong background in pastoral ministry, particularly in the area of Christian initiation, and is a sought-after keynote speaker and group facilitator for conferences and events.
Luke Timothy Johnson is emeritus Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. Among his many books are Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity (Yale) and Prophetic Jesus, Prophetic Church (Eerdmans). He is a regular contributor to Commonweal.
Cathleen Kaveny is the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor of Law and Theology at Boston College. She works at the intersection of law, religion, and morality. Her recent books include Prophecy without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square (Harvard University Press, 2016) and Ethics at the Edges of Law: Christian Moralists and American Legal Thought (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Matt Mazewski is a fellow at the think tank Data for Progress. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University, where he served for five years as rapporteur of the University Seminar on Catholicism, Culture, and Modernity, and completed his undergraduate studies in economics, math, and statistics at Haverford College. He resides in his native New Jersey. @mattmazewski
Jo McGowan writes from Dehradun, India where she has lived since 1981. In addition to Commonweal, her work has appeared in Newsweek, the Guardian, National Catholic Reporter, U.S. Catholic, the Human Life Review, and all the major dailies in India. She is co-founder and executive director of the Latika, a non-profit in India for disabled children. She and her husband Ravi have three children (though Moy Moy is not longer physically with us) and three grands. @JoChopra
Paul Moses, professor emeritus of journalism at Brooklyn College, is the author of The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam and Francis of Assisi's Mission of Peace (Doubleday, 2009) and, most recently, The Italian Squad: The True Story of the Immigrant Cops Who Fought the Rise of the Mafia (NYU Press, 2023). @PaulBMoses
Santiago Ramos, contributing writer for Commonweal, is a native of Asunción, Paraguay, and emigrated to Kansas at a young age. He completed a doctorate in philosophy at Boston College with a dissertation about Plato and beauty, and has taught at several universities. He has worked as an art critic for the Kansas City alt-weekly, The Pitch, and his essays and reviews have appeared in America, Plough, First Things, and Image Journal.
Susan Reynolds is an assistant professor of Catholic Studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. She is the author of People Get Ready: Ritual, Solidarity, and Lived Ecclesiology in Catholic Roxbury (Fordham University Press, 2022) and other work on theology, culture, migration, Catholic practice, and clergy sexual abuse. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and three daughters. @SusanBReynolds1
Robert Rubsam’s work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Baffler, and the Nation, among other places. @rob_rubsam
Margaret O’Brien Steinfels served as Commonweal’s editor, 1988-2002, was co-director of its “American Catholics in the Public Square Project,” and continues as a columnist and reviewer. She retired from Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture in 2012. Before all of that, she was editor of the Hastings Center Report, Christianity and Crisis, and Church magazine. She favors using a comma before and in a series, and loves semi-colons.