Josh
Bottomly
"Every great story turns on the moment when all seems lost — and then the unexpected joy arrives."
Eucatastrophe
The Modern Day Story of a Fairy Tale
J.R.R. Tolkien coined the word eucatastrophe — the sudden, joyous turn when all hope seems lost. In this deeply personal memoir, Josh Bottomly takes us through the dark valley of depression and out the other side, arguing that this literary device is in fact the hidden structure of real life.
"Compulsively readable."
— Kirkus Review
"A must-read for those who seek hope, healing, and personal growth."
— Publishers Weekly
"Both hard to put down and determinedly pointed in its life journey."
— Midwest Book Review
A Good Calamity
A Hopeful Guide to Transform Tragedy into Fairy Tale.
A Long Obedience
Fourteen Meditations on Hobbits, Middle-earth, and Middle Age.
The Orphan Detectives & The Mystery of the Baobab Tree
Debut YA Novel.
A Good
Calamity
A Hopeful Guide to Transform Tragedy into Fairy Tale
Drawing on J.R.R. Tolkien's concept of eucatastrophe — the good that emerges from calamity — Josh Bottomly maps the U-shaped arc of the human story: descent, then ascent. Doom, then boom. A book about storytelling, survival, and the unexpected turn that changes everything.
"One way the light gets back in is through storytelling — the kind that requires one to shape words around the very thing that gives shape to our trauma."
"My story has a U-shape. The U reflects my journey of descent and ascent. Doom. Then boom."
"Bad things happen. Hold on. The eagles are coming."
— Chapter 6"It is not that calamity is a good thing, but that something good can come from calamity."
— Chapter 6"We read to know we are not alone."
— C.S. Lewis, quoted in Chapter 1Stories that
reorient lives.
Professional Development
For educators, leaders & organizations
Leadership Through Disorientation
Leading in Uncertain Seasons
For school leaders, teams, and organizations navigating change without losing the people they lead.
Pedagogy of Hope
Teaching as an Act of Orientation
For educators who want to form students, not just inform them — drawing on three decades in the classroom.
The Art of Storytelling
Narrative as Identity
How the stories we tell — and the ones told about us — shape who we become, and how to tell better ones.
Student Leadership
For students learning to orient their own lives
The Hero's Journey in Real Life
Orientation · Disorientation · Reorientation
A framework for the human experience: how we lose our footing, wander the valley, and find a truer footing on the other side.
Eucatastrophe
The Joyous Turn
On the sudden, grace-filled moment when all hope seems lost — and how to recognize it in your own story.
Mental Health & the Middle Way
Walking Through the Dark Valley
An honest, interdisciplinary look at depression, recovery, and the slow work of becoming whole.
Josh Bottomly is a gifted storyteller whose rare combination of vulnerability, humor, and heart creates an immediate connection with audiences and leaves a lasting impact. His Thrive Talk was both deeply moving and remarkably authentic, inspiring attendees to reflect on resilience, meaning, and the power of story.
Emilia Ayon
Senior Director of Programs, Leadership and Governance·National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS)
The darkest moment in the story
is not the end.
It is the hinge.
About
Josh
Author · Speaker · Coach
For more than thirty years, Josh Bottomly has lived inside the long, strange arc of an educator's life — in classrooms, on athletic fields, and in the quiet offices of school leadership. As a teacher, coach, and administrator at two independent schools, he has walked alongside young people through their most formative seasons, and that work has become the soil everything else grows from.
His writing and speaking blend humor, confessional honesty, and a kind of penetrating insight that draws freely from literature, philosophy, popular culture, theology, psychology, film, neuroscience, neurotheology, and sociology — a wide net, cast in service of a single aim: helping people make sense of their own stories.
He is the author of Eucatastrophe, an interdisciplinary memoir that earned a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, and the forthcoming A Good Calamity, arriving March 2027 from Roadrunner Press. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature, and speaks nationally and internationally on mental health, leadership, spirituality, pedagogy, and the art of storytelling — helping students, teachers, and communities navigate hard seasons with honesty and hope.
Josh lives in Central Oklahoma with his wife and son.
Book Josh
for your event.
Signature talks that blend self-deprecating humor with confessional honesty and interdisciplinary insights — spanning literature, philosophy, theology, neuroscience, psychology, film, sociology, and popular culture.
