Reverend Andrew Forsthoefel is a writer, an ordained interfaith minister, and the Restorative Practice Systems Specialist for the Cumberland County Public Health Department in Portland, Maine. He works with schools to co-create and implement restorative practice cultures and restorative justice systems. On the side, he gives keynotes; writes a bimonthly Substack newsletter called The Little Courtyard; and tends a small private practice, offering spiritual direction for individuals and consultation for non-profits and schools. 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 and with two primary mentors: Therese Jornlin, a master contemplative teacher and facilitator, and Darryl Slim, a respected medicine man in the Diné hózhó (beautyway) tradition. Andrew’s work is also informed by his year-long initiation 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 tribes of the Wabanaki Confederacy, the People of the Dawnland, in that part of the Earth now known as the United States of America.