![](https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Jana-Riess-and-Onyx-2018-rotated-1.jpeg)
Jana Riess is a senior columnist at Religion News Service and the author of many books, including “The Prayer Wheel” (Random House/Convergent, 2018) and “The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church” (Oxford University Press, 2019). She is working on a sociology book with Benjamin Knoll about why and how people leave the LDS Church. She has a PhD in American religious history from Columbia University. She is a ward history specialist and Relief Society teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio.