Echo Montgomery Garrett

Journalist Echo Montgomery Garrett has spent her career finding and writing stories that matter. From the moment she and Georganne Chapin first spoke about “this penis business,” Echo knew this project was a social justice issue that had the potential to change millions of lives. As the mother of two sons, she had questioned the routine practice of circumcision when they were born but couldn’t find anyone among her peers who had not had their sons cut. She later joined the sisterhood of regret moms, who were pressured by medical professionals to circumcise, and has since dedicated herself to getting the truth about this medically bogus surgery that irreversibly harms boys and the men they will become into the American public’s conscience. A graduate of Auburn University, Echo has co-authored, contributed to, or ghostwritten twenty-five nonfiction books, including Why Don’t They Just Get a Job: One Couple’s Mission to End Poverty in their Community, by Liane Phillips, which won the Independent Book Publishers Association Benjamin Franklin Award in the Social Issues category. Liane and her husband Dave, co-founded Cincinnati Works, an award-winning nonprofit.

Echo also co-authored with Sam Bracken My Orange Duffel Bag: A Journey to Radical Change. She co-founded the Orange Duffel Bag Initiative (ODBI), a nonprofit that provides life plan coaching and ongoing advocacy to young people ages 14-24, who are experiencing poverty, homelessness or aging out of foster care. The book won two international awards for best book design, and five awards for best young adult non-fiction and best self-help, including the American Society of Journalist and Authors Arlene Eisenberg Award for Writing that Makes a Difference. 

Echo is co-founder (with her son Connor Judson Garrett) and CEO of Lucid House Publishing, LLC, publisher of both This Penis Business and Marilyn Milos’s Please Don’t Cut the Baby! She and her husband Kevin Garrett, who photographed the Skin in the Game: Circumcision Cuts Through Us All campaign, reside in Marietta, Georgia.