Alec Gewirtz is a writer and the CEO of Nearness, a cooperative business fostering spiritual community for nonreligious people. He’s also Editor and Publisher of Amulet, a new literary magazine of spirituality, religion, and mysticism.

His work has been featured on BBC, NPR, and in The Atlantic. A graduate of Princeton University, where he studied religion, and a former Fulbright Research Fellow in theology at the University of Toronto, he lives in New York City.

Photo: Rinko Kawauchi, Ametsuchi