A columnist for openDemocracy and a senior correspondent for Religion Dispatches, Chrissy Stroop's work has also appeared in Playboy, The Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, and other outlets, including peer-reviewed academic journals. Holding a PhD in modern Russian history from Stanford University, Stroop taught college students in both Moscow, Russia, and Tampa, Florida, before leaving academia to become a full-time writer in 2018. In 2019, she came out as transgender and moved to Portland, Oregon, where brunch is the Sunday thing to do and pretty much all great music decades go in their afterlives.