About

Gary L. Matthews, journalist and publisher, is a second-generation Baha’i with a lifelong passion for science writing and interfaith discourse. He and his wife, Cheri, are founders of Stonehaven Press and live in Knoxville, Tennessee.

He is a native of South Carolina, but grew up in Tennessee. He attended Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, graduating in 1972 with a B.A. degree in English, with minors in journalism and French.

Subsequently he worked for four years as a newspaper reporter and photographer at the Tullahoma News in Tullahoma, Tennessee. Among others, his beats included education, legal affairs, and aerospace research. The latter involved space-related technologies being developed at the University of Tennessee Space Institute and the Air Force’s Arnold Engineering Development Center, both near Tullahoma.

From 1976-77 he was editor of the Grundy County Herald in Tracy City, Tennessee.

After moving to Knoxville in 1977, he worked in the field of typesetting and computer graphics. He and his wife, Cheri, pioneered in 1988 to Grenada, West Indies, as Peace Corps volunteers. Gary’s specific project involved desktop publishing of training manuals for cocoa farmers.

Upon returning to the states in 1991, he and his wife founded Stonehaven Press, a computer typesetting and publishing firm. In addition to doing typesetting for advertising and book publishing agencies, Stonehaven publishes a variety of Baha’i teaching materials, particularly for Christian audiences.

Gary Matthews is the author of several popular books, including “The Challenge of Baha’u’llah” (George Ronald, 1993) and “He Cometh With Clouds” (George Ronald, 1996). “Challenge” has gone through three editions, including a 2005 version from Baha’i Publishing, the trade-publishing arm of the U.S. Baha’i Publishing Trust.

His more recent books include “The Case for Baha’u’llah” (Stonehaven, 2012) and “Every Eye Shall See” (Stonehaven, 2011). These are abridged versions of “Challenge” and “Clouds”, respectively, published under license from George Ronald.

Some of Gary’s other books are “The Metropolis of Satan”, “‘Abdu’l-Baha, Einstein and Ether”, “Muhammad: Defender of Christians”, and “Becoming America’s Religion”. Stonehaven Press also publishes a variety of teaching tools to facilitate interfaith conversation. These include the well-known “stained-glass” pamphlets for Baha’i-Christian dialogue.

Gary’s North American travels as a Baha’i teacher have taken him from Alaska to Florida, from California to Montreal, and countless destinations in-between. Internationally they have taken him to Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Vietnam, and South Korea, among others.

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