In 2005, Lind drew on her professional expertise and personal experience to write Simply In Season (Herald Press), a cookbook arranged by season with an emphasis on fresh and local foods. Lind co-wrote the book with a Goshen College graduate, Cathleen Hockman-Wert.

“That whole sense of eating locally and seasonally [that I grew up with] was what was so important about Simply In Season,” said Lind. She hopes the book will help broaden the horizons of recent generations of home cooks who don’t “know where their food comes from other than the supermarket, [and] who want to support the local, seasonal food economy but to whom it is not part of their heritage.”

A decade before Simply In Season’s publication, Lind and her sister, Sarah Myers (class of ’67) co-wrote Recipes from the Old Mill: Baking With Whole Grains (Good Books, 1995), inspired by childhood memories of their uncle, who ran a water-powered grain mill in West Virginia.

Herald Press celebrated the 30th anniversary of a kindred bestseller, Living More with Less, with last year’s release of a new edition edited and expanded by Valerie Weaver-Zercher ’94. Living More with Less was originally written by Doris Janzen Longacre, who died of cancer just before completing her manuscript (her husband, with three others, ushered it into publication). Longacre had previously written the bestselling More-with-Less Cookbook (Herald Press, 1976 & 2000) – 860,000 copies sold by 2010, including British and German editions – which provided inspiration for Lind and Hockman-Wert’s Simply in Season.

Doris Janzen Longacre, author of the bestselling More-with-Less Cookbook (over 900,000 sold since 1976), wrote Living More with Less as a practical guide for simple, sustainable, and healthy living. Longacre died of cancer on Nov. 10, 1979, as she was nearing completion of Living More with Less, her second book. Her husband, Paul Longacre (class of ’61), completed the last two chapters.

Under Weaver-Zercher’s editorship, this 30th anniversary edition is true to Longacre’s spirit of living in ways respectful of poor people, God’s creation and each other. It contains new and practical tips on such matters as money, travel, clothing, housing, celebrations and recreation. The book’s proceeds will benefit Mennonite Central Committee.

Weaver-Zercher was one of the literary artists covered in the summer 2010 edition of Crossroads, but she was mischaracterized in that issue as a “full-time mother to her two sons.” Weaver-Zercher has three sons, and she has a vibrant career. (The Crossroads editor apologizes for making these errors; they were the result of unknowingly publishing out-dated information.)

Weaver-Zercher lives in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Her features, essays, op-eds, and book reviews have been published in a variety of publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Orion, Publishers Weekly, Sojourners, The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Books & Culture, Mothering, Brain, Child, Literary Mama, The Mennonite, Mennonite Weekly Review, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Other Side.

Her essay “Holding Baby Birds” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and receives special mention in the Pushcart Prize XXXIII anthology (2009). She received a 2009 Individual Artist’s Fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Weaver-Zercher has received two first-place awards from the Associated Church Press and one first-place award from the Evangelical Press Association. She is a regular book reviewer for The Christian Century, an editorial consultant for Cascadia Publishing House, a poetry consultant for The Mennonite, and a contributing editor to Sojourners.

In addition to writing and consulting, she does developmental editing, copyediting, and manuscript review for a variety of publishers and individuals. Her clients have included Brazos Press, Baker Academic, InterVarsity Press, Herald Press, Cascadia Publishing House, and scholars who have gone on to receive book contracts with Jossey-Bass and Oxford University Press.

Weaver-Zercher has a master’s degree in Reading/Writing/Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania. She majored in English at EMU.