Community Minister, Law Enforcement Chaplain & Author

Lecture Theme: Here if You Need Me

Kate Braestrup is the author of the novel, Onion; memoirs, Here If You Need Me, a New York Times best seller; Marriage and Other Acts of Charity; and Beginner's Grace: Bringing Prayer to Life.

Kate Braestrup is one of the first chaplains ever appointed to the Maine Warden Service. She also is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, regularly performing weddings throughout Maine. In 2010, she received an honorary doctoral degree from Unity College.

She has appeared and was interviewed by National Public Radio, the Hallmark Channel, and other media locally and nationwide.

Braestrup's fiction and non-fiction work has appeared in Law and Order, the New York Times, The Sunday New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, Downeast, O magazine, Good Housekeeping, Hope, among other publications.

Braestrup and husband, Simon van der Ven, and their six children reside in Maine.