Lent Madness 2012 boasts an all star lineup of “celebrity” bloggers serving as contributors. Meredith Gould, Penny Nash, Bosco Peters, Heidi Shott, Adam Thomas, Laura Toepfer, Neil Alan Willard, and Chris Yaw have all agreed to participate in the madness this year.

Enjoy reading the contributor bios below, log onto their respective website and blogs, and by all means buy their books! (where applicable).

Dr. Meredith Gould

Meredith Gould, Ph.D. is a sociologist and author of eight books, including The Word Made Fresh: Communicating Church and Faith Today (Morehouse). She blogs about cultural weirdness at More Meredith Gould and spends an inordinate amount of time on Twitter as @meredithgould and @chsocm. Keen on using social media to build community, Meredith started the weekly church social media chat (#chsocm) on Twitter,  has served as Abbess of @Virtual_Abbey for nearly two years, and recently published Getting #Married: Using Social Media to Celebrate the Sacred (Plowshares). Raised Jewish, she’s forever making a fuss about the Jewish roots of Christian worship. Many good friends, including her husband, The Rev. Canon Dan Webster, are Episcopal clergy. Discover even more about her here.

The Rev. Penny Nash

The Rev. Penny Nash is still somewhat amazed that she is the associate rector at Bruton Parish Episcopal Church in downtown Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. When people ask her what women priests wore in the Colonial Era, her response is, “Pants.” Before her move to the Commonwealth, she served in the Diocese of Atlanta (GA), where some of her family, including pets Miss Kitty and Mr. Bunny, still live – so, you may run into her at an airport or along the interstate. Known in the social media world as Penelopepiscopal, Penny posts prayers or reflections, accompanied by her own photography daily at her blog One Cannot Have Too Large a Party. Friend her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter @penelopepiscopl.

The Rev. Bosco Peters

The Rev. Bosco Peters is chaplain at Christ’s College, Christchurch, New Zealand. He is the token Southern Hemisphere blogger on the Lent Madness team. He is also first past the dateline, so leads the world in all liturgical celebrations. He has a Maths and Science degree from Canterbury University, and an Honours degree in Theology from the Melbourne College of Divinity. One of the books he has written, Celebrating Eucharist, is world famous in New Zealand. He blogs at Liturgy, and tweets at @liturgy, and can’t quite work out why he is the most-followed Kiwi on twitter. You can “like” him at Facebook.

Canon Heidi Shott

Heidi Shott is Canon for Communications and Social Justice in the Episcopal Diocese of Maine. She is the Vice Chair of the Standing Commission on Communications and Information Technology, and served as Chair of the Episcopal Life Board of Governors from 2002 to 2006 (before Gunn and Schenck shut the place down.) She has also worked on the Office of Communication’s video news team for the past two General Conventions, hosting “The Daily Wrap” in Anaheim in 2009. Praised widely for her writing about faith in daily life, Heidi writes for a variety of publications and blogs. She keeps the blog www.heidoville.com. With her husband Scott, a hospital administrator, and their twin teenage sons, she makes her home on a millpond in midcoast Maine where she roots for the Red Sox even when they lose.  This summer look for her video blog, www.indy300.net -  General Convention: Three Minutes at a Time.

The Rev. Adam Thomas

The Rev. Adam Thomas is associate rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Cohasset, Massachusetts, which is about ten minutes away from the church of our illustrious leader, the Rev. Tim Schenck. Adam is the author of Digital Disciple: Real Christianity in the Virtual World (Abingdon 2011), which you should read since you are using the Internet right now and you are more than likely a Christian. Adam just celebrated his first wedding anniversary with his wife Leah, who is wonderful and lovely and every other good adjective you might think of. He is busy being married, serving God at his church, and writing a novel, which is why you haven’t seen much from him lately on his blog WheretheWind.com, but there’s nearly four years of backlog to keep you busy for a long weekend. You can fan Adam on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @RevAdamThomas.

The Rev. Laura Toepfer

The Rev. Laura Toepfer is the Managing Director of Confirm not Conform, an organization devoted to creating confirmation programs that celebrate questions and authentic faith. After seven years in college, youth, and parish ministry, in 2008 Laura became a Kiva Fellow and worked with microfinance agencies in Uganda before returning to her native California. She is the author of the curriculum Eat, Pray, Grow, produced by Every Voice Network—a program that is remarkably well-suited to a church Lenten series. She preaches regularly throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and often has snarky things to say about church on her blog The Infusion. She also has a thing about obituaries.

The Rev. Neil Alan Willard

The Rev. Neil Alan Willard is Rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Edina, Minnesota, a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis. His study there overlooks beautiful Minnehaha Creek on its way to the Mississippi River. He’s married to Carrie, also beautiful, and they have two sons and a Labrador Retriever in the household. Outside the house are chipmunks and raccoons. No kidding. Last bit of trivia: his father-in-law is an Episcopal priest in Wisconsin, his brother-in-law is an Episcopal priest in Hawaii, and his sister-in-law’s husband is an Episcopal priest in South Carolina. No kidding. Follow him on Twitter @neilwillard and be sure to check out his blog Laughing Water.

The Rev. Chris Yaw

The Rev. Chris Yaw is a gifted procrastinator who spends the busiest season of the church year researching trivial things about obscure saints and spending an inordinate amount of time photo shopping his head shot. When more productively occupied, he serves the good people of St. David’s in Southfield, Michigan and somehow seduces well-intentioned people to talk with him at his congregational development blog, churchnext.tv. All this while soldiering on with his decades-long struggle to recover from his baptism.