I spend a lot of my time around the UK and abroad speaking about the issues that interest me to a whole variety of different groups of people (take a look at my speaking calendar to get an idea of some of the things I do).
I love getting out and about and would be very pleased to hear from you if you would like me to come and speak at an event that you are organising. To help you with that, here’s some information that I hope will be helpful.
Timing
Although I travel a lot, I try to balance that with my other commitments around my family, my community involvement, my church and my allotment and pigs. To facilitate that I have set a limit that I won’t be away for more than two weekends in any month and so that means we may have to juggle dates together a little. Please be patient while we find a date that suits us both.
Payment
I don’t state a set speaking fee as I recognise that different events vary in what they are able to pay. Money is not my motivation and I wouldn’t want to say no to something for that reason alone. At the same time, of course, this is one of the ways by which I am able to pay the bills and so I would ask that all expenses are covered and some sort of speaking fee is added on top, at a level at which you can afford. Please note that I do need to be paid in money and not in book tokens, as I’ve found that I can’t buy food at my local shops with those! Please feel free to talk with me about how much your event is able to pay me.
Travel
It’s important to me that I travel in as carbon-light a way as possible. So, whenever I can I will travel by public transport rather than car. That often means that I will need to stay a night before or after your event and will need you to provide travel to and from the station. If I have to fly somewhere then I ask that you contribute an appropriate amount to Climate Stewards as part of expenses, to offset my carbon emissions.
Contact Me
If you would like to book me for a speaking engagement you can reach me through the ‘Leave a Reply’ box underneath or email me at ruth@ruthvalerio.net.
Ruth Valerio 
Hello Ruth. I’m the organiser of a Festival each year at Cliff College in Derbyshire. Next year the dates are May 24-27 2013 and I wondered if you were free to come and preach and give a seminar. The event is all age and we have about 2500 people over the weekend. Although the college is Methodist, the constituency is quite broad. The theme of the Festival this year is discipleship, and for the seminar i wondered if you could speak on something like ‘Why discipleship affects the way I act towards the environment’, and the preach would be on a passage of your choosing, though with a discipleship angle. What do you think?
Hi Piers, nice to hear from you. Thanks ever so much for this invitation. Thankfully I’m free on those dates and so I’d love to come and speak at the Festival. I’ll book the dates out and will look forward to hearing more from you nearer the time. Do use my email address: ruth@ruthvalerio.net. All the best, Ruth
Dear Ruth
I hope you don’t mind an unsolicited approach, but you have been recommended to me as somebody who might consider the possibility of writing BRF’s Advent book for 2015.
As you may know, we publish a book of Advent readings each year, providing a Bible reading, comment of around 800 words and concluding prayer or point for reflection for every day from December 1 to January 6. The book is published in September of the year in question, with the author completing the text a calendar year previously. The choice of overall theme is entirely up to the author, so for Advent this year we have Real God in the Real World by Trystan Owain Hughes (exploring the implications of ‘the Word made flesh’ for our lives today) and in Advent 2012 we published Rachel Boulding’s Companions on the Bethlehem Road (what we can learn from great poets to help us on the faith journey).
You may, of course, already be committed to other writing projects, but if you are interested in exploring the Advent idea further, I would be delighted to discuss it with you.
With best wishes
Naomi Starkey