Q&A with Jen Hatmaker and Shauna Niequist

Authors and friends Shauna Niequist and Jen Hatmaker are returning to Blackberry Farm to host a memorable event celebrating the power of connection. Life Around the Table is designed to feel like an extended, intimate dinner party where Jen and Shauna will share their tips for hosting and exclusive insight on their current projects.

We asked Shauna and Jen a set of questions to learn a little more about them and what’s important to them in and outside of their work. Learn even more from and about these two at Life Around the Table this February!

JEN HATMAKER

Who has played an influential role in your life?
Spiritual leaders who were asking and answering questions I was privately asking: Rachel Held Evans, Sarah Bessey, Jeff Chu, Brian McLaren.

What is your favorite place you've ever visited?
Santorini, Greece…I’ll never get over it.

What is your favorite book of all time?
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. I’ve read it 50 times.

What book are you reading now?
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

When you’re not working, what are your hobbies?
Reading, traveling, planning for traveling, cooking and fussing over my plants. I am an indoor plant lady now; I’m obsessed.

What’s a risk you’ve taken?
After the unexpected end of a 26-year marriage, I started dating at 47 and had the nerve to fall in love.

What do we not know about you?
I am a textbook introvert and have to work really hard to overcome my weird social anxieties.

What’s your perfect evening after a busy week?
Thai delivery, a glass of Cabernet, an action/comedy movie and my dreamy boyfriend on the cozy couch with me.

What qualities do you most admire in others?
Humor, integrity and humility.

When it comes to entertaining, do you have a go-to menu item that you make for every event?
Honey mustard and pecan-crusted salmon. Takes five minutes to prep, and it is a home run 100% of the time.

What has been one of your favorite events you’ve hosted and why do you think it stands apart from others?
I host a 50-person dinner every year in my backyard for new investors in my nonprofit, Legacy Collective. People fly in from all over. It is both high-level in terms of food and drinks and table settings, and low-level in terms of laughter, connection and flat shoes. Gathering generous givers around good food, good wine, good music and good work in my own backyard where I actually live is the best thing I can think of.

SHAUNA NIEQUIST

Who has played an influential role in your life?
I’m a lifelong bookworm, so writers, authors and storytellers have been my guides and teachers all my life—from Laura Ingalls Wilder and Frances Hodgson Burnett, to Louise Penny and Zadie Smith, to Ruth Reichl and Barbara Brown Taylor.

What is your favorite place you've ever visited?
Besides Blackberry? In all honesty, Blackberry Farm is one of my favorite places on earth, but I also love Santa Barbara (where I went to college), Lake Michigan (where we spend the Summer), and the British Virgin Islands, especially the North Sound of Virgin Gorda.

What is your favorite book of all time?
Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies

What book are you reading now?
Dwight Garner’s The Upstairs Delicatessen

When you’re not working, what are your hobbies?
Cooking, hosting and walking in the city.

What’s a risk you’ve taken?
Moving to New York City

What do we not know about you?
I know a shocking amount of Kennedy family trivia, and I’m an avid Chicago Cubs fan.

What’s your perfect evening after a busy week?
Happy hour with our neighbors in the courtyard of the seminary where we live—a picnic blanket, a sheet pan of snacks, a bottle of something bubbly. Friends and neighbors, kids running in and out, possibly a stack of pizzas from our local spot if we stay out long enough for dinner.

What qualities do you most admire in others?
Bravery, curiosity and willingness to laugh.

When it comes to entertaining, do you have a go-to menu item that you make for every event?
I make bacon-wrapped dates and homemade onion dip for snacks or happy hour absolutely all the time, and for dinner, I love serving a big pot of curry, chicken marbella or platters of mezze and shawarma.

What has been one of your favorite events you’ve hosted and why do you think it stands apart from others?
Our first holiday season in New York, we hosted a few families for a breakfast-for-dinner pajama party on New Year’s Eve. I thought it would be a low-key, early night, but it turned into a super fun, wild and silly, kids-and-parents dance party in our tiny living room. We stayed up well past midnight, dancing in our pajamas, eating donuts and drinking champagne, and I remember thinking the next morning, “I think we’re really going to like it here!”