SUMMIT SPEAKERS
JAMES HOWARD KUNSTLER
Kunstler is an American author, journalist, and social critic whose work examines the built environment, urban development, energy, economics, and the long-term forces shaping American life. He is best known for The Geography of Nowhere, his influential critique of suburban development and the transformation of the American landscape, and its follow-up, Home from Nowhere.
Kunstler is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, including The City in Mind, The Long Emergency, Too Much Magic, and the four-volume World Made by Hand series. Before turning to books full-time, he worked as a newspaper reporter and later as an editor and staff writer at Rolling Stone. His essays and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other publications.
Over a career spanning more than five decades, Kunstler has become a distinctive voice on questions of place, community, technology, resource constraints, and the future of American civilization. He has lectured at universities including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, and MIT, and lives in upstate New York.
JAMES DELINGPOLE
Delingpole is an English writer, journalist, broadcaster, and podcaster whose work spans politics, culture, energy, environmental issues, and contemporary public life. Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, he has spent more than three decades in British journalism, developing a reputation for sharp commentary, irreverent humor, and a willingness to challenge prevailing orthodoxies.
Delingpole has written for publications including The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, and The Spectator. He is also the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including How to Be Right, Welcome to Obamaland, and Watermelons, addressing subjects ranging from politics and environmentalism to the broader currents shaping modern Britain and the West.
He is the host of The Delingpod, a long-form interview and commentary program featuring conversations on politics, history, culture, faith, science, and public affairs. Across print, broadcasting, and independent media, Delingpole has built a distinctive body of work characterized by intellectual independence, skepticism of institutional consensus, and an abiding interest in personal liberty and cultural change.
PEACHY KEENAN
Keenan is an American writer, essayist, and cultural commentator whose work examines family, religion, feminism, politics, and contemporary American life. Writing under a pseudonym, she brings an often satirical perspective to questions of cultural change, marriage, motherhood, and the institutions and ideas shaping modern society.
Keenan is a regular columnist at The Spectator and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Her writing has also appeared in The American Mind, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Lyceum, Frontier Magazine, and The Washington Examiner, among other publications. She writes independently through her Substack newsletter, Peachy Keenan’s Extremely Domestic.
She is the author of Domestic Extremist: A Practical Guide to Winning the Culture War and Supervillains: Architects of America’s Decline. Keenan lives in Southern California with her husband and five children.
ALEXANDER MACRIS
Macris is an American polymathic entrepreneur, publisher, and strategist with two decades of experience in interactive entertainment and transmedia development. In 2005, he founded The Escapist, leading the videogame publication to six Webby Awards and a place on Time magazine’s Top 50 Websites list. After selling The Escapist in 2012, he became Senior Vice President of Emerging Brands at Defy Media, building an eclectic portfolio of websites and YouTube channels into the company’s largest and highest-earning division.
During the culture wars that engulfed gaming in the mid-2010s, Macris’s refusal to bend to prevailing progressive orthodoxies carried significant professional consequences and ultimately redirected his career. In 2017, he became head of Autarch LLC, a transmedia publisher creating fantasy and science-fiction books, comics, and games shaped by deep worldbuilding and classical civilization. He also writes Contemplations on the Tree of Woe, exploring philosophy, politics, economics, history, and culture.
Macris graduated summa cum laude from Binghamton University and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. His recent book, Running on Empty, became an Amazon #1 bestseller. Across business, publishing, and independent writing, his work reflects intellectual independence, historical imagination, and a willingness to pursue conviction despite professional cost. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife Amy and their imperious dog, Maximus Magnus.
JOHANN KURTZ
Kurtz is an English writer, legacy adviser, and succession strategist whose work explores inheritance, family, history, theology, and the institutions that sustain civilization across generations. His writing is particularly concerned with the relationship between wealth and responsibility, the transmission of cultural and religious inheritance, and the practical obligations one generation owes to the next.
Kurtz is the author of Leaving a Legacy: Inheritance, Charity, & Thousand-Year Families, which examines the philosophy and practice of inheritance, charitable giving, family continuity, and multigenerational stewardship. He is also the creator of Becoming Noble, a bestselling Substack publication read by tens of thousands, where he writes on philosophy, theology, history, family life, and contemporary social change. His essays have also appeared in First Things.
Drawing upon historical examples, classical and Christian thought, and contemporary questions of family and wealth, Kurtz advocates a longer view of human flourishing—one grounded in duty, continuity, and stewardship. His work challenges the modern tendency to regard wealth and achievement as purely individual concerns, instead examining how families and institutions can cultivate resources, traditions, and responsibilities intended to endure.
DR. MICHAEL MARTIN
Martin is an American theologian, poet, editor, and educator whose work explores the intersections of religion, literature, philosophy, and the imagination. He earned his Ph.D. in English from Wayne State University, specializing in early modern literature and religion. Over the course of his career, he spent sixteen years as a Waldorf educator and more than seventeen years teaching at the college and university level.
Martin is Director of the Center for Sophiological Studies and editor of Jesus the Imagination: A Journal of Spiritual Revolution. His books include The Submerged Reality: Sophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics, The Incarnation of the Poetic Word, Sophia in Exile, and, most recently, Surely Some Revelation Is at Hand: Poetry, Magic, Imagination. Across his writing, he examines Sophiology, Christian thought, metaphysics, poetry, and the relationship between the sacred and the created world.
Beyond his scholarly work, Martin is also a musician, songwriter, and longtime biodynamic farmer. He began farming biodynamically in 1990 and today lives with his wife and family on a farm in Michigan, where they raise dairy goats, keep bees, and cultivate a market garden.
WILLIAM BUPPERT
Buppert is a retired U.S. Army officer, military-affairs writer, and podcaster whose work focuses on irregular warfare, military strategy, intelligence, special operations, and the institutional performance of modern Western militaries. Over nearly a quarter-century of military service, he served first in the U.S. Navy and later as an Army officer in light-infantry, airborne, military-intelligence, and Special Forces formations. Following retirement, he worked as an instructor, analyst, and adviser on irregular warfare and military intelligence, including assignments in Afghanistan.
Buppert hosts Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast and WarNotes: A Conflict Podcast, where he examines insurgency, counterinsurgency, conventional warfare, emerging military technologies, and the strategic assumptions underlying American national-security policy. He is also the Smedley D. Butler Fellow for Military Affairs at the Libertarian Institute and the founder of ZeroGov.
Buppert holds a B.A. in Political Economy from Humboldt State University and a master’s degree from American Public University System, where his graduate work focused on asymmetrical warfare. Across his writing and broadcasting, he brings military experience, extensive historical study, and an uncompromisingly skeptical eye to questions of war, strategy, institutional competence, and political power.
DR. STEPHEN MIRARCHI
Mirarchi is an American scholar, writer, and educator specializing in literature and culture. He began his career as an internationally syndicated rock photographer, with work appearing in Rolling Stone, Vibe, People, and other publications, before returning to academia. He earned his doctorate in English and American Literature from Brandeis University and now teaches at the Sheridan Center for Classical Studies, Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas.
Mirarchi is particularly known for his scholarship on American novelist and Hollywood filmmaker Myles Connolly. He has edited five annotated volumes of Connolly’s work, including Mr. Blue, providing scholarly introductions and annotations that have helped renew interest in Connolly’s literary legacy. His academic and popular writing has addressed authors including Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Crane, Louise Glück, Robert Pinsky, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Raymond Carver.
His writing has appeared in academic journals, magazines, and newspapers including the Boston Globe, National Catholic Register, and St. Austin Review. Before settling in Kansas with his wife and daughter, Mirarchi sang bass-baritone for the Schola of the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica Choir. He is also a competitive marathoner.
DOUGLAS DYE
Dye is an American entrepreneur and cross-cultural leader whose work has centered on building organizations, developing people, and leading teams across radically different institutional environments. From Wall Street to Tierra del Fuego, Dar es Salaam to Los Angeles, his career has spanned Fortune 100 companies, the U.S. Foreign Service, and international nonprofit organizations. He is the founder of Manalive Media Group and co-founder and CEO of Arcata.
Dye began his career in the jungles of postwar Nicaragua as a business-development volunteer with the United States Peace Corps. He has since lived in six countries across Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East, conducted business in more than twenty-five, and worked in settings ranging from major commercial centers to remote and developing communities. He earned his M.B.A. from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and his B.S. in Business Administration from the University of California, Riverside.
A self-described tragic optimist and fallible knight-errant, Dye was born and raised in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, to which he has returned. He begins his days with a workout along the Yellowstone River and ends them meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary.
“There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.”
— Michel de Montaigne —
