Andrew Forsthoefel is a writer, an ordained interfaith minister, and the Restorative Practices Specialist for the Cumberland County Public Health Department in Portland, Maine. He works with schools to design and implement restorative systems that support both youth and adults in the work of community-building and conflict transformation. On the side, he gives keynotes; writes a bimonthly Substack newsletter called The Little Courtyard; and offers restorative consultation to schools and non-profits.

Author of the critically acclaimed coming-of-age memoir, “Walking to Listen,” Andrew is currently working on his second book, a memoir focused on masculinity.

Andrew’s writing, ministry, and restorative work are supported by more than ten years of training with two primary mentors: Therese Jornlin, a contemplative teacher and facilitator (also, his mother), and Darryl Slim, a master circle-practitioner in the Diné hózhó tradition. Andrew’s work is also informed by his year-long rite of passage in 2011-2012, walking from Philadelphia to San Francisco.

He comes from Northern European lineages, is fully American, and lives with his wife, Tana, and their beloved dog, Rose, in midcoast Maine, ancestral homeland of the sovereign Wabanaki tribes, the People of the Dawnland, in that part of the Earth now known as the United States of America.