Diana Leafe Christian

Diana Leafe Christian
Residence	North Carolina, United States
Fields	Permaculture

Diana Leafe Christian is an author, former editor of Communities magazine, and a nationwide speaker and workshop presenter on starting new ecovillages, on building communities, and on sustainability. She lives in an off-grid homestead at Earthaven Ecovillage in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, USA. A 2007 quip of hers about what living in community is, is that "it is the longest, most expensive, personal growth workshop you will ever take."

Christian grew up in Los Angeles. According to her, she learned to write at what she called a "real-life school of writing". During the 1970s and 80s Christian wrote articles for New Age magazine, Yoga Journal, and East West Journal, and she hosted radio interview programs in Hawaii and in northern California.

In the early 1990s Christian published a newsletter, Growing Community, about starting new communities. During 1993-2007 she was editor of Communities magazine, a quarterly publication of the nonprofit Fellowship for Intentional Community (FIC), about intentional communities and organized neighborhoods in North America. Her first book on communities (see below) was published in 2003 and her second in 2007. In 2007, she founded the bimonthly Ecovillages newsletter, a project of Cooperative Resources & Services Project.

Christian is the author of two books designed to help people who want to join or start their own ecovillages or other intentional communities. In Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities, she uses success stories, cautionary tales, and step-by-step advice to cover typical time-frames and costs; the role of founders; getting started as a group; vision documents; power, governance, and decision-making; legal structures; finding and financing land; zoning issues; sustainable site plans; selecting new members; and good process and communication skills for dealing well with conflict.

In Finding Community: How to Join an Ecovillage or Intentional Community, she covers researching, visiting, evaluating, and joining communities.

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