My name is Christie Purifoy. I am a writer and gardener. I love to grow flowers and community. Most of all, I am a placemaker, and the place I am making with my family is a red brick Victorian farmhouse in Pennsylvania called Maplehurst.
I am the author of two memoirs, Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons (published by Revell in 2016) and Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace (published by Zondervan in 2019). A book of essays and photographs celebrating the garden called Seedtime and Harvest: How Gardens Grow Roots, Connection, Wholeness and Hope will be released by Harvest House Publishers in March 2024, completing my trilogy of gardening gift books that began with Garden Maker (2022) and A Home in Bloom (2023).
In 2010, I received a PhD in English Literature from the University of Chicago. A few years later I traded the classroom for a picket-fenced garden and an old writing desk.
I believe that life, in all its pain and beauty and mystery, is a journey of love. Writing keeps my eyes wide-open to this astonishing reality.