Michael J. Iafrate is a theologian and songwriter from West Virginia and a doctoral candidate at the University of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto. He currently serves as Co-Coordinator of the Catholic Committee of Appalachia (CCA) and was the primary author of CCA’s people's pastoral letter "The Telling Takes Us Home: Taking Our Place in the Stories that Shape Us." His writing has appeared in National Catholic Reporter, Religion Dispatches, The Journal of Postcolonial Theory and Theology, The Conrad Grebel Review, and in the collection Secular Music and Sacred Theology, edited by Tom Beaudoin (Liturgical Press, 2013), and he has presented papers at the Catholic Theological Society of America and Appalachian Studies Association annual conferences. He will release two full-length albums, "Christian Burial" and "Nonsubstantiation," in late 2016.