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The First Thursdays Dinner Series at Princeton Theological Seminary returns in 2026 to the fields and tables of the Farminary for another season of big ideas and unforgettable meals. Hosted on the Seminary’s 21-acre sustainable farm, each intimate, 24-seat dinner pairs a world-class chef with a leading voice in scholarship, art, or activism—featuring Zoë Schlanger, Kenda Creasy Dean, Allison Carruth, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil. With produce harvested steps away and conversations unfolding over dinner, the 2026 series invites guests to linger at the intersection of food, faith, creativity, and courage. Just big ideas and delicious food—shared around one table.
Zöe Schlanger, author of The Light Eaters, joins us for a rich conversation at the intersection of science, agriculture, and theology. The discussion will explore emerging research on plant communication, perception, and intelligence, asking what it means to recognize plants as dynamic, responsive beings rather than passive backdrop.
Rev. Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean joins us for a candid conversation about faithful experimentation in a fragile world. Drawing on Dean’s work in social innovation and ministry and Stucky’s leadership in ecological formation, they will explore how Christian communities discern when to act boldly, how to cultivate courage without recklessness, and how risk can become a site of spiritual growth.
Dr. Allison Carruth—author of Novel Ecologies and a documentarian exploring climate change’s impact on communities—joins us for a conversation at the intersection of storytelling, ecology, and faith. They conversation will examine how narrative—on the page, on film, and on the land—shapes public understanding of climate realities and galvanizes communal response.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees, joins us for a conversation rooted in land and table. Over dinner, we will explore how attention to food and the natural world nourishes both artistic practice and spiritual formation. Drawing on poetry, personal story, and the Farminary’s working farm, the dialogue will invite participants to savor creativity as an embodied, ecological act.
Nathan Stucky serves as Director of the Farminary Project at Princeton Theological Seminary. He grew up on a farm in Kansas where his love for Christian faith and agriculture first took root. After earning a BA in Music from Bethel College (KS), Stucky spent six years doing ecumenical youth ministry on the eastern shore of Maryland, and two years farming back in Kansas. After farming, Stucky earned an MDiv and a PhD (Practical Theology, Christian Education and Formation) from Princeton Theological Seminary. His scholarship explores questions of land, ecology, theology, agriculture, justice, joy, and Sabbath as they relate to theological education. He is the author of Wrestling with Rest: Inviting Youth to Discover the Gift of Sabbath. Ordained in the Mennonite Church (USA), Stucky engages Farminary work as integral to his calling to teaching ministry. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his spouse and three children.
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Zoë Schlanger is a staff writer at the Atlantic, where she covers climate change. She is the author of The Light Eaters (HarperCollins, 2024), a New York Times bestselling book about the world of plant behavior and intelligence research. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and on NPR, among other major outlets. She was the recipient of a 2017 National Association of Science Writers reporting award for coverage of air pollution in Detroit and a finalist for the 2019 Livingston Award for a series on water politics at the Texas-Mexico border. She lives in New York.
Kenda Creasy Dean, PhD ’97, is an ordained United Methodist pastor in the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference, and the Mary D. Synnott Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary. In addition to teaching in practical theology, education, and formation (specifically youth and young adult ministry, Christian social innovation, and theories of teaching), Dean works closely with Princeton’s Institute for Youth Ministry and the Farminary. Dean is the author of numerous books on youth, church, and culture, the best known of which include Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church (Oxford, 2010), Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church (Eerdmans, 2004), and The Godbearing Life: The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry with Ron Foster (Upper Room, 1998).
She has directed numerous grants on youth, innovation, and the church, including The Zoe Project (2017-2021), and was co-director with Harold Masback of The Joy and Adolescent Faith and Flourishing Project through Yale’s Center for Faith and Culture. In 2013, she co-founded Ministry Incubators, Inc., an educational and consulting group that supports Christian social innovation and entrepreneurial ministries. A graduate of Wesley Theological Seminary, she served as a pastor in Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey and as a campus minister in suburban Washington, D.C. before receiving her PhD from Princeton Seminary in 1997.
Allison Carruth is Professor in the Effron Center for the Study of America and High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University, where she directs Blue Lab and the lab’s Climate Stories Incubator. She is the author of Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food (Cambridge UP, 2013), Literature and Food Studies (with Amy L. Tigner, Routledge 2017), and Novel Ecologies: Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech (University of Chicago Press, 2025). From 2016-2020, she was the founding faculty director of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS) at UCLA. She has published scholarship widely in venues such as Agriculture and Human Values, ASAP Journal (Arts of the Present), Modernism/modernity, PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association, Public Culture, and Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities. Her current research areas include the cultural dimensions of climate change and climate action, established and emerging forms of environmental narrative, new media, and evolving relationships between environmentalism, environmental science and technology in a contemporary US context.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil was born in Chicago to a Filipina mother and South Indian father. She earned her BA and MFA from the Ohio State University. Her books of poems include Night Owl (Ecco, 2026), Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), and three books from Tupelo Press, Lucky Fish (2011), At the Drive-In Volcano (2007), and Miracle Fruit (2003). With Ross Gay, she co-wrote the chapbook of epistolary nature poems, Lace & Pyrite (Organic Weapon Arts, 2014). She is the New York Times bestselling author of two illustrated essay collections, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments (Milkweed Editions, 2020) and Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees (Ecco, 2024). Nezhukumatathil’s work has appeared in numerous journals including The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and American Poetry Review.
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