Summer Fiction Book Club

Ayana Melvan is with the Aquarium Conservation Partnership and works as the Senior Director of Conservation Action where she is responsible for strategic partnerships, policy, and advocacy with a special focus on Ocean and Environmental Justice and Equity. Ayana has led work with a racial equity lens using the collective impact approach locally and nationally for more than a decade. Ayana graduated cumlaude from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst with a B.A. in communications with a film certification and during her collegiate years lived in Florence, Italy and studied there. She serves as the co-chair on the board of Youth In Action, Inc. in Providence, as the Vice Chair on the board with Ocean Connect, and as a board member of Esperanza Hope in Rhode Island. When Ayana isn’t at work or serving on boards, she’s enjoying the beautiful shoreline of Rhode Island at Misquamicut Beach with her family during all seasons!

Daniel Wolpert, a healer and student of the spiritual life, worked as a research scientist, psychologist, farmer, and teacher, before earning his Masters of Divinity degree at San Francisco Theological Seminary (SFTS). Co-founder and former Executive Director of the Minnesota Institute of Contemplation and Healing, he has taught in the fields of psychology and spiritual formation in numerous settings around the world. A writer and a spiritual director, he has also played key roles in developing environments for contemplation and spiritual leadership, helping to build or restore monasteries, theological schools, and retreat centers across North America. Author of multiple books on the spiritual life, his most recent work is Looking Inward, Living Outward: The Spiritual Practice of Social Transformation (Upper Room 2024). When not on the road, he lives in Seattle spending as much time with his grandson as possible.

Rev. Nicole Diroff is ordained in the United Church of Christ. Having served as Program Director for The BTS Center since 2020, with primary responsibility for coordinating the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the Center’s programmatic offerings, Nicole recently assumed a new role as Associate Director, effective July 1, 2024. She holds expertise in facilitation, data management, and strategic planning. Nicole is a certified Maine Master Naturalist, serves as Chair of the Spiritual Formation Committee at Williston-Immanuel United Church and Co-Chair of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion Committee for the Scarborough Public School District. She lives with her family in Scarborough, Maine.

The Rev. Alison Cornish serves as the Coordinator of the Chaplaincy Initiative at the BTS Center. Alison spent the first half of her professional life working as an historic preservationist and architectural historian, primarily in New England and on Long Island, NY.  After 20 years of work with museums, municipalities and nonprofit organizations, Alison attended Andover Newton Theological Seminary in response to a felt sense of call directly from Earth to address what is it that we are doing in our daily lives and habits that is destroying the planet that we inhabit. Following CPE, field education in interfaith work and parish ministry, and ordination in the Unitarian Universalist tradition, Alison served congregations on Long Island while also embarking on studies with the Buddhist teacher Joanna Macy and Dominican sister Miriam McGillis. Alison became a GreenFaith Fellow in 2013, and a Climate Reality Project presenter in 2017. She has served as Senior Director of Programs at Partners for Sacred Places, Executive Director of Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light, Director of Seminary and Congregational Initiatives at Interfaith Philadelphia, and as the Affiliated Community Minister at First Unitarian Church, Philadelphia.  Alison’s facilitation work includes the Work That Reconnects, training-the-trainers for Civil Conversations, group practice of Nonviolent Communication, and the curriculum “Healthy Congregations.” A Program Consultant for the BTS Center since 2021, her work has focused on ecological and climate grief, religious imagination, and chaplaincy in a climate-changed world. Alison and her husband Pat live in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, on the unceded lands of the Nipmuc and Pocumtuc peoples, in the watershed of the Connecticut River.  When not working, Alison can be found along, on, and in, a local natural body of water, currently the Deerfield River.

Rev. Ash Temin is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) who serves as the Communications Manager at The BTS Center. She also offers spiritual direction through her independent practice in Portland, Maine.

Ash is a graduate of the University of Virginia (BA), the Irish School of Ecumenics at
Trinity College Dublin (MPhil) and Harvard Divinity School (MDiv). Her time at both the ISE and HDS sparked a passion for ecological theology and prompted her to begin delving more deeply into the experience of ecological grief. Prior to moving to Portland, she served as an Acting Associate Pastor at Hope Central Church, a UCC/DOC congregation in Boston. Before answering the call to ordination, Ash worked in various administrative roles at Harvard University. She also has worked as a hospital and hospice chaplain, an adjunct professor, and a freelance editor.

After time spent living in Texas, Virginia, Colorado, Ireland, and Massachusetts, Ash is grateful to make her home in Maine, where she spends part of most days walking on the shores of Casco Bay. When not absorbed in work, she can be found cooking with friends, laying in her garden hammock, hiking in the woods, playing in the ocean, or attempting to learn the Irish language with a cat on her lap.

Madeline Bugeau-Heartt serves at The BTS Center as a program associate. She is a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School and NYU Tisch School of the Arts. A longtime experimental theater and film-maker, Madeline is passionate about creating spaces for people to tap into their kindest, most imaginative selves, especially as we navigate this radical transition that our beloved, climate-changed world demands. She draws from this artistry, her “catholic-adjacent” mysticism, as well as her past-lives as farmer and caregiver to practice into better ways of being with others. When not working, Madeline can be found taking lengthy walks, spending time with her cherished family and friends, and lifting weights; she is forever cooking up new ways to build neighborhood in her home of York, Maine and beyond.