Rev. Marti Keller has served as a Unitarian Universalist minister for more than 25 years, most recently as co-transition minister for the UU Church of Jacksonville, Florida in 2019-2020. Just previously she was the consulting minister for the Auburn UU Fellowship in Alabama through July 2019 and an independent consultant on congregational ministry. Prior to this, she was the affiliated minister with the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation from 2013 — December 2018 and the associate minister at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta, focusing on social justice, denominational work, small group ministry, and adult education. She has been both a parish and community minister, serving congregations in the Mid-South since 1998. She has been a guest speaker in many pulpits, including Dublin, Ireland, and San Miguel De Allende, Mexico. She is also a past president and current Board member of the Unitarian Universalists for Jewish Awareness.
Rev. Keller is spending more time researching, reflecting on and writing essays and immersion journalism, having spent the first 20 years of her professional life as a reporter and editor. Her undergraduate degree is in Journalism from University of California at Berkeley, and she spent more than 20 years in print and cable television as an arts critic, reporter, and columnist. Her education and training in communications and public witness were employed for a dozen years as Director of Public Affairs and Government Relations for Planned Parenthood in California. She served as executive director of two other non-profit advocacy organizations focusing on women and children, and was the first public policy coordinator for the Rural-Urban Network in Georgia.
Rev. Keller is a member of PEN America, an international community of writers, editors, translators, and readers who are working to defend free expression, support persecuted writers, and promote literary culture.
She is also a published poet with Red Wool Socks and Dark Chocolate: A Life in Three Lines (Matrika Press, 2020), Thinking in Haiku (CreateSpace, 2017), Prickly Pear (Farm House Press, 2009), and South/West (Shakespeare’s Sisters Press, 2013). She is the co-editor, with Leah Hart-Landsberg, of Jewish Voices in Unitarian Universalism (Skinner House, 2014). She is also an author and editor of Faith of UU Jews, part of the welcoming pamphlet library of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Rev. Keller is available for both live pulpit appearances and virtual, depending on the current community level of COVID infection.
