Johanna Vann
14 min read ⭑
“I wanted to show people how one generation’s thoughts, patterns and experiences shape the lives of those who come after them, and I believed that books were the coolest way to do that.”
Johanna Rojas Vann is a woman of many passions — reading, writing, cooking from scratch, keeping her home and homeschooling her three children are just a few. Another of her passions? Telling stories about messy families and the God who redeems them. Her debut novel, “An American Immigrant,” tells the story of a Colombian American journalist who travels to Colombia for an assignment and rediscovers her family history along the way.
Today, she’s chatting about her newest release, “Where the Wilted Flowers Bloom,” how eating clean changed her body and life, and the power of fiction to grow our hearts and minds. She wrote these answers just for Rapt — and for readers like you.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
Food is always about more than food; it’s also about home and people and love. So how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
When I first heard about this restaurant just 10 minutes from my new home outside of Nashville, I didn’t believe it could be true. Everything was organic? Everything was sourced from local farms practicing regenerative agriculture? No seed oils … ever? It just couldn’t be true. And if it was, surely every meal costs at least $100?
I loaded up my minivan with my husband and my three young children (ages 5 and younger) — I had to see this place for myself. Once we were parked outside Herban Market in Franklin, Tennessee, I was surprised to see how busy it was. Surely, this place wouldn’t be so busy if each plate was $100?
We walked through the front doors, and the first thing we saw was the stand carrying the menus you can browse while you wait in line to place your order. I picked one up, and there it was, right on the front of the menu: “This is not fast food. This is good food.”
A smile stretched across my face.
I had found my people … with my people.
All right, yes, I’m a food snob. I’ll call it like it is. But food snobs become food snobs when they experience the kind of radical healing I experienced when I changed everything I ever believed about real food and true health.
I consider it a great mercy that I had this awakening just after giving birth to my first child. Now, one of my greatest passions, one of the most fun things I get to do each day, is cooking food from scratch for the people I love the most. Watching them devour my homemade food — from breads made with freshly milled grains to homemade fermented dairy and meats I carefully source from local farms — is my favorite part of the day.
Yes, I write fiction. Yes, I love to write. But can I be honest with you for just one second?
Nothing gets that twinkle in my eye sparkling like spending a few hours in my kitchen, and Herban Market helped me believe I wasn’t crazy for doing so. Real food matters. God created it, and boy, am I glad he did!
Autumn Mott Rodeheaver; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual, after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?
Let’s talk about food again, shall we? I could talk about it all day. Sometimes my husband lovingly and comically encourages me to “take a day off” from cooking, caring, sourcing, watching food content, etc., and I jerk back, “But I don’t want to!” Because I just love it. I love it so much that I end most days with tired legs from the number of hours I spent in the kitchen. From sunup to sundown, you’ll find me milling grain, making yogurt, butchering chickens, baking cookies and muffins with my little ones, whipping up elaborate lattes, straining bone broth and so much more. There’s always more work to be done in my kitchen, and I’m so thankful for that.
Real food changed my life.
At a time when I looked healthy on the outside, my body was suffering on the inside. Persistent cavities, unexplainable anemia (doctors couldn’t figure out what was causing it), painful periods (no, this is not normal), a constantly cold body, crazy low vitamin D levels, horrible eczema that made it hard to enjoy summertime and the beginnings of psoriasis on my legs (which all women in my family have).
Real food cured all of that.
Now, I marvel at the way God’s plan is revealed through food in such an intentional way.
I marvel at the way food scraps can turn into nutrients to grow more food.
I marvel at the way we can create so many different kinds of food from one simple food — milk can become butter, yogurt, kefir, cheese, sour cream and more.
I marvel at the way fermentation can make my farmers market hauls extend through the winter months when nothing grows outside.
I marvel at the way bone broth can heal a sick body and honey can soothe a sore throat.
I even marvel at the way the fallen leaves in my yard feed and nourish the soil before everything freezes over (no, we never rake our leaves!).
God gave us such marvelous creations in nature, and I never experienced it more holistically than when I started spending more time in the kitchen.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you confront its power?
There are so many things vying for my attention on any given day, and like a Labrador who sees a squirrel running down an oak tree, it’s easy for me to lose focus and chase the next exciting thing on the horizon.
To name just a few of my passions:
My children — homeschooling them, taking them on adventures, reading aloud to them, getting them outside, etc.
Cooking from scratch — as I’ve talked about at length already.
Writing — I know that I was born to write. I know that God created me with a wild imagination and a love for story, so while writing novels can only fit into the slim margins of my life right now (due to my season of motherhood), I still long for writing to have a place in my daily existence.
Reading — there are so many books I wish to devour that if I don’t have the time to sit and read the physical book, you’ll find me with headphones in, trying to listen and absorb as much as possible.
Keeping a home — I can’t live in filth. Despite having three small children at home full-time and expecting a fourth this fall, I have to make time to keep a relatively tidy home. If my space is cluttered and messy, then my life feels cluttered and messy, so this has been a priority since day one.
Nonfamilial relationships — whether this looks like spending time with my friends and neighbors or volunteering at my church, it’s important to my husband and me to make time for community, fellowship and service.
I’m sure if I sat and thought for another hour, I could come up with 10 more passions, and sometimes, I think that’s the problem. The desire to do it all results in an achy body (from overexertion), abandoned projects and even a sense of failure when I’m forced to admit that half of my to-do list will never see the light of day.
You can tell me to narrow down my passions and my priorities, but man, it’s just so hard.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
Novels have changed my life.
I’ll never forget the first time I read “The House of the Spirits” by Isabel Allende. I closed the book after reading the last page and just sat there on my couch thinking.
I thought about my grandparents and what it must have been like for my parents to grow up under their roof. I thought about my parents emigrating to the United States when they were young adults. I thought about how my siblings and I all have such distinct memories of our childhood, and that sometimes those memories contradict each other.
Isabel Allende helped me see what it means to be a product of your upbringing. She helped me understand how family shapes you. It was because of that book that I wanted to write my own stories about dysfunctional families (which are all families). Like her, I wanted to show people how one generation’s thoughts, patterns and experiences shape the lives of those who come after them, and I believed that books were the coolest way to do that.
So I started with my first book, “An American Immigrant.” In that book, I share a story of a young woman coming to grips with her broken identity after uncovering uncomfortable truths about her mother’s journey from Colombia to the U.S. That book was healing for me to write.
Now, I’m over the moon to share another family-centered story in my next novel, “Where Wilted Flowers Bloom.” This book feels special because I believe it has the potential to help readers see beyond their grief and pain to a God who’s in the business of redeeming and transforming. It’s been true in my own life — despite the dysfunction — and I hope to help readers see how it can be true in their own lives as well.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Whether we’re cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
When I started writing my second novel, I was four months postpartum with my third child. My other two were only 2 and 4 years old (and home full-time with me), so as you can imagine, there wasn’t much sleep or rest happening.
The problem was that I had promised a wonderful publishing house that I would write them another novel. There were many days that I contemplated giving back my advance and begging my publisher to cancel my contract.
How could I ever get 80,000 decent words down on paper in six months when I’m still nursing around the clock, waking up twice a night and entertaining a pair of rowdy preschoolers — who don’t nap — throughout the day?
It felt like an impossible task, and not just impossible, but silly. A mother like me shouldn’t even bother …
Thankfully, by God’s mercy, I had been slowly reading through Jan Karon’s Mitford series during the end of my pregnancy and into postpartum. It was during the deepest depth of my doubts that one of the characters quoted James Hudson Taylor. She said, “There are three stages in the work of God: impossible, difficult, done.”
I knew the Lord was trying to tell me something when I read that quote, and it was something like: “I’m in the business of the impossible if you will only let me help you.”
So I wrote up a prayer that I could recite whenever I sat down to write:
As I sit here to write
I acknowledge that you sit here with me
You guide my hands, my mind, my heart
Lord, give me the words that you would have me write
That they may bless those who read them
And draw near the hearts of those you love
To your glory and for your glory
Amen.
I promise I’m not trying to be overly spiritual when I say the Holy Spirit helped me write my book. When I look back and read through my book, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought, “I don’t remember writing that.” And that’s how I know the Holy Spirit used me as a vessel to finish this manuscript. He truly invigorated me, helped me find the time to sit uninterrupted and equipped me to turn in my manuscript with two weeks to spare.
I will never again attempt to do any of my work apart from the help of the Holy Spirit, because he writes the best stories after all.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
I’m a doer. Can you tell?
I prefer to be in motion. Part of that is because if I sit down — especially on one of my comfy couches — I will immediately get tired and want to nap (four kids in six years will do that to you!). But I also simply enjoy being productive and getting things done — it’s how the Lord wired me, and I’m grateful for it.
The problem arises when I attempt to fill every moment of every day with some kind of action that grows me in some way. From books to podcasts to YouTube tutorials — it’s hard for me to work around the house without some form of media playing in the background.
And that’s where the spiritual practice of silence and solitude comes in for me.
When my kids are happily playing in the yard, I’m so tempted to grab my book and get another chapter in or grab my phone and finish my podcast. But at least twice a week, I have to remind myself to be present right there. To allow my background noise to be the sound of my children’s laughter and the birds chirping in the trees above me.
Other days, when I sit down in the living room with my hot cup of coffee, I’m tempted to immediately grab my notebook to start creating my to-do list for the day or my Bible and commentary to start my reading for the day. And while I obviously believe the Word of God is a great way to start each day, there are some days — especially when my heart is anxious about something — when I feel the Lord inviting me to just sit in silence.
To stare ahead at the blank wall and just slowly sip my coffee. It always turns out to be a practice that refreshes me, steadies me and helps me to receive my children with peace and joy when they wake up for the day.
Even when the media we’re consuming is educational and growing us in some way, sometimes it’s the silence that grows us most.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and changed your heart?
Believe it or not, one resource that recently moved my heart was a massively thick book on church history called “Church History in Plain Language: The Story of the Church for Today’s Readers” by Bruce Shelley. I remember my husband picking up the book from the end table in my living room and asking, “Are you really going to read this?” Oh, yeah, I did, and I’m so glad I did. This book helped me to understand the context and historical premise for my faith, and I think this is a forgotten cornerstone to many people’s faith journey. Don’t be intimidated by the size; it truly is written in plain language and so enlightening!
Next, I would encourage you to check out an incredible podcast series on prayer by Phylicia Masonheimer that ran on her podcast “Verity” from January 23, 2026 through March 19, 2026. Phylicia is one of the most incredible Bible teachers of our time, in my opinion. In this series, she answers tough questions like “Can Satan hear my prayers?” “Do we need deliverance prayer?” and “Why do I feel bored with prayer?” Prayer is one of those spiritual habits that I believe many, many Christians struggle with — including myself — and this series helped me recalibrate my prayer life by giving me a deeper understanding into what is happening when I pray.
Finally, not a day goes by that I don’t worship God through song with my children. My favorite band to listen to on a regular basis is CityAlight. I love their music because it’s always rooted in Scripture — literally reading it word for word at times — which helps align our hearts with our Creator on ordinary days. I’ve never heard a song they made that I didn’t love!
Certain things can be godsends, helping us survive, even thrive, in our fast-paced world. Does technology ever help you this way? Has an app ever boosted your spiritual growth? If so, how?
To be honest, I’m really not a fan of technology. Yes, I own an iPhone, and yes, I’m answering these questions on a MacBook Pro, but I still try to use these instruments as little as possible.
I’ve never been a big user of fancy apps for any part of my life. I keep a whiteboard calendar on the kitchen wall to keep my family organized no matter how many times I get an ad for a fancy Skylight — not interested. I carry my beautiful olive green Bible to church every Sunday, no matter how much lighter my load would be lugging three kids to church if I just used my Bible app. I keep all my scattered notes, ideas and to-do lists in a spiral-bound notebook, no matter how much easier it would be to use an app like Notes or Evernote, where you could easily find lost ideas with the click of a button.
I feel that no matter how much more convenient or efficient those tech tools can be, they pull me away from real life — something I’m constantly fighting against in this modern age.
That’s why my favorite “tool” that helps me grow spiritually is actually my spiral-bound notebook. It sits on the end table in my living room next to my Bible and commentary so that whenever I’m studying or praying, I have a place to quickly jot down non-related thoughts. Without that notebook, my mind will continue to wander to the grocery list I need to finish or the reminder to email so-and-so that I feel I can’t forget. When I quickly jot down the idea/list/reminder, my mind is cleared to focus on the reading or prayer at hand without the help of my phone. And praise the Lord for that!
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
Writing stories is one of my many passions, and having had the privilege to write two novels already with a reputable publisher is truly an unbelievable honor. I never want to take that for granted because I know getting published lies dormant on the bucket list of countless people around the world.
While I feel the Lord has already strengthened and grown my faith through this journey of writing books — because relying on his grace and strength is the only way to accomplish this work when you have small children at home — I feel him leading me into even deeper dependence.
I’m currently dreaming about a bigger book project than I’ve ever worked on before: a series. I long to have more time and space to develop characters beyond just one book. I want to give my readers an opportunity to read more and get deeper into the lives of my very imperfect Christian — and sometimes non-Christian — characters. I’m dreaming about a series that starts with the lives of four friends in one book and then writing sequels where we can zoom in on each person to get a closer glimpse into their lives, journeys and unique faith walk.
Stay tuned because I have a feeling this is going to be a good one.
How we live, work, play and even eat can be a reflection of our love for Jesus. As the apostle Paul wrote, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31, ESV).
For Johanna, that looks like sourcing locally grown, unprocessed food for her family whenever possible and cooking with a heart that says, “Jesus, this is for you.”
How do you glorify God with your eating and drinking? Perhaps it looks a little different for you than it does for Johanna — but it’s a question worth pondering before your next grocery run.
Johanna Vann is a novelist, wife and stay-at-home mom. She lives and writes in Nashville, Tennessee, where the coffee is good and the people are even better. Her debut novel, An American Immigrant, was released on Aug. 15, 2023 and won the Christy Award for First Novel in 2024. It was also the International Latino Book Award Gold Winner for Best First Book — Fiction; Silver Winner for The Isabel Allende Most Inspirational Fiction award and a finalist for the Tennessee State Book Award. She also writes about nutrition, real food and low-tox living on Substack.