About

Ruth Goring’s children's picture book Isaiah and the Worry Pack was among the inaugural titles of the IVP Kids imprint in 2021. Her author/illustrator debut, Picturing God (Beaming Books, 2019), was named a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. Adriana's Angels, another picture book, was published by Sparkhouse Family in 2017; a Spanish edition, Los Angeles de Adriana, was released simultaneously and won a silver Moonbeam Award in the Spanish Book category.

Ruth also accepts occasional illustration commissions; seven collage images of biblical psalms will appear in The Peace Table, a children's story Bible (MennoMedia, 2023).

Her poetry collections are Soap Is Political (Glass Lyre, 2015) and Yellow Doors (WordFarm, 2003). Her poems have also appeared in venues such as CALYX, Pilgrimage, RHINO, New Madrid, Iron Horse Literary Review, Reunion, and Crab Orchard Review, and in anthologies such as What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump, edited by Martin Espada (Northwestern Univ. Press, 2019).

Ruth was born in Kansas but grew up in Colombia and is involved in human rights causes there. Her professional career was in editing, most recently in the books division of the University of Chicago Press and teaching advanced manuscript editing in the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies. Nowadays she focuses on botanical art, collage illustration, the writings of medieval mystic Julian of Norwich, and her tiny garden of prairie plants a few blocks from the shores of Lake Michigan. She is represented by Keely Boeving at WordServe Literary.

Other Works

  • Picturing God

    2019
  • Caras lindas de Colombia / Beautiful Faces of Colombia

    2018
  • Adriana's Angels

    2017
  • Soap Is Political

    2015
  • Yellow Doors

    2003

Awards and Recognition

  • Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection (Picturing God)
  • Silver Moonbeam award (Los Angeles de Adriana)
  • Nominations for Orison Anthology and Best of the Net (“Ávila,” poem published in Psaltery & Lyre, 2021)