Contributors
Carolyn Gage is the author of more than fifty-five plays and six books. Two anthologies of her work were published in 2008, and The Pele Chant, about this kahuna incident, is included in Nine Short Plays. Her work is available online at stores.lulu.com/carolyngage.
Judy Grahn is a poet, cultural theorist, and teacher. She edits an online journal, Metaformia, at www.metaformia.com. Her newest books are love belongs to those who do the feeling (a collection of short poems from 1966-2006) from Red Hen Press and The Judy Grahn Reader (prose and longer poems) from Aunt Lute Press. She teaches her own theoretical work in a Women’s Spirituality Master’s Program at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. She performs her own poetry, in collaboration with musicians; and teaches writing and literature in Writing, Consciousness, and Creative Inquiry, an interdisciplinary MFA program at California Institute of Integral Studies. She lives in California, and is married to Kris Brandenburger; they are two of 18,000 legally married Gay people in the state.
Hye Sook Hwang currently teaches online for Religious Studies and Women’s Studies at University of Central Missouri while enrolled in another MA program in East Asian Studies at UCLA. She received a Ph.D. degree in Religion with the emphasis on Women’s Studies from Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA in 2005. Her publication, among others, includes "The Female Principle in the Magoist Cosmogony," Ochre Journal of Women's Spirituality, September 2007. [www.ciis.edu/ochrejournal/2007/scholarship/hwang1.html] She plans to spend the coming year on writing her book, The Mago Hypothesis: Reinstating Mago, the Great Goddess of East Asia, and Her Tradition Magoism (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010).
Nané Ariadne Jordan has a working background in pre-regulation Canadian midwifery that deeply informs her research and writing on themes of midwifery, birth, mothering, women’s spirituality and goddess studies. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. She completed a BFA in photography from the University of Ottawa, and an MA in Women’s Spirituality from New College of California. She continues to practice art, with a focus in developing ecofeminist ritual performance, art and writing. Her current dissertation study explores the experiences of faculty and student alumni within the Women’s Spirituality MA program. She is working "towards" a philosophy and thealogy of birth within this program. She lives in Vancouver B.C. with her husband and two daughters and loves the trees, the ocean and savoring life with family, friends and scholarly community.
Liliana Kleiner, Ph.D., is a visual artist, writer, teacher and Jungian therapist. She was born in Argentina and lived in Israel, Canada and Mexico. Her interest in Lilith began in childhood, and through the years Lilith's free spirit has guided her, weaving dreams, myths and nature into her art and life. She has made an art film titled "Lilith and the Tree" ( Montreal ,1993) and published a book, The Song of Lilith (Jerusalem: Yair Medina, Jerusalem Fine Art Prints, 2007). Her work is shown in her site: www.lilianakleiner.com
Susan Kullmann runs a company that offers technology development, consulting, and training services to small businesses, professionals, and educational and non-profit organizations. Blessed Are These Hands combines her passions for photography, computing, and the history and contemporary meaning of women's lives.
After a 30-year hiatus, Vanita Leatherwood is finding her way back to writing and publishing again. She lives in the Washington DC Metropolitan area where she facilitates Transformative Language Arts workshops that promote spiritual, philosophical and social change across boundaries of age, class, culture, gender, race and sexual orientation. Her Power Point documentary, They Called Her Funny, features audio clips of interviews with six women of African descent who came to clarity about their lesbian sexual identity later in life. Information about her workshops, documentary and 2009 Goddesses of African Datebook (artwork featured in this issue of Trivia) can be found by writing to . In March, her work will be part of an exhibit, “Poets & Painters” at the Artists' Gallery in Columbia MD.
Katie Manning is a visiting professor for the 2008-2009 school year at Point Loma Nazarene University, where she teaches writing and literature courses. Her poetry and book reviews have been published or are forthcoming in Ancient Paths, Boxcar Poetry Review, Downgo Sun, Kansas City Voices, New Letters, ONTHEBUS, Relief, and others. She recently received the Harriette Yeckel in Honor of Ingrid de Kok Award.
Betty De Shong Meador, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst, member and past president of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. Her translations of Sumerian poetry related to Inanna appear in her book Uncursing the Dark. She has published all the known work of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna, the first author of record and devotee of Inanna, in Inanna - Lady of Largest Heart and the forthcoming Princess, Priestess, Poet - The Sumerian Temple Hymns of Enheduanna. Meador lives on a ranch in San Diego County where she and her husband manage a small vineyard.
Marianela Medrano is a Dominican writer and psychologist living in Connecticut. She offers workshops and readings in various venues. In her workshops, she combines literature, psychology, and her research on the Sacred Feminine to help others find new ways of knowing the wholeness of human beings. Her publications are: Oficio de Vivir (1986), Los Alegres Ojos de la Tristeza (1987), Regando Esencias/The Scent of Waiting (1998) and Curada de Espantos (2002).
Deena Metzger is a poet, novelist, essayist, storyteller, teacher, healer and medicine woman who has taught and counseled for over forty years, in the process of which she has developed therapies (Healing Stories) which creatively address life-threatening diseases, spiritual and emotional crises, as well as community, political and environmental disintegration. She is the author of many books, including most recently, From Grief into Vision: A Council; Doors: A fiction for Jazz Horn; Entering the Ghost River: Meditations on the Theory and Practice of Healing; The Other Hand; Tree: Essays and Pieces, A Sabbath Among the Ruins, Looking for the Faces of God and Writing For Your Life. A collection of poetry, Ruin and Beauty, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in April 2009.
Katya Miller is a graduate of the Design Department at the University of California, Berkeley. For 30 years, she has been producing cultural imagery through her symbolic jewelry and independent film. Her jewelry designs sell in museums and catalogues nationwide, as well as on the Internet. The sculpted statue/pendant of Lady Freedomhas sold at the US Capitol Historical Society kiosks and the Senate Gift Shop. Katya began researching the history of Lady Freedom by consulting with the curator and historians at the Capitol, as well as doing years of historical research. Her article “An Appreciation of Thomas Crawford’s Statue of Freedom-A Statue Called Pocahontas, America, Liberty, and Freedom” was published in The Capitol Dome magazine published by the US Historical Society, winter 2007. She is currently writing a book on Lady Freedom and hoping to make it into a documentary film.
email:
, jewelry: www.culturalimages.net
Andrea Nicki has a Ph.D. in feminist philosophy and has had writing published in book anthologies and journals including Hypatia and Sinister Wisdom. Her first collection of poetry, Welcoming, will be published in Spring 2009 by Inanna Press, Toronto, Canada.
A member of the Italian Feminist Movement since its beginnings in the early ‘70s (Lotta Femminista, Gruppo femminista per una Medicina delle donne, Libreria delle donne, Libera università delle donne), Luciana Percovich is a teacher, an editor, a translator and the author of Posizioni amorali e relazioni etiche, Melusine, Milano, 1993 (also in Figuras de la madre, Madrid, 1996), La coscienza nel corpo. Donne, salute e medicina negli anni Settanta, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2005, Oscure Madri Splendenti. Le origini del sacro e delle religioni, Venexia, Roma, 2007.
Shannyn Sollitt - My first name, Shannyn, is adapted from my grandmother’s maiden name, the same as the Shannon River in Ireland. The river was named after the Goddess Sinnan who came wildly rushing from the sea one day and dove right into the Well of Wisdom that was being carefully guarded by the old Druids. Her unbridled unruly act, to the dismay of the old stick-in-the-butt Druids, released all the wisdom from the well and it flowed out to the sea in what became the Shannon River. Sinnan freed all that wisdom for the benefit of the whole world and at the same time released the Salmon of Knowledge who, after swimming the seven seas, returned to the Well of Wisdom replenishing it with the great wisdom and knowledge of the whole world.
When I studied Sinnan’s stories in many varied Celtic accounts, I knew that she was inside of me. Her mission is mine. I call myself a Communications Artist. Besides occasionally being a bold and compassionate anarchist I founded and direct a non-profit corporation, NetWorks Productions, a communication arts production company, creating media, community events, educational programs and performances with a mission to disseminate wisdom and knowledge to inspire the care of the Earth and people. My favorite communication art is storytelling and community ceremony. I love sharing the myths sourced from the deepest truths of our human experience—especially stories of the goddesses. I rejoice that this recent turn in American politics, led by a President who openly worships his superfine and courageous mother, as well as his wife, represents a strong movement toward awakening the values of a truly egalitarian Society —“The Egalitarianarchy.” I humbly consider myself among the ranks of the Velvet Revolutionaries in the world, modeled after Vaclav Havel’s Velvet Revolution – the revolution of love.
Marvelle Thompson artwork is influenced by the beauty and magic in the cycles of nature and the feminine face of the Divine. Creating art brings balance to her life. She has taught art to adults and children, and is a strong supporter of the visual and performing arts in the classroom. Blessed Are These Hands is a vow to creatively capture the feminine face of the Holy and, in some small way, repay the debt she owes to all women whose hands have embraced life and the constant battle for justice.
Lise Weil teaches in Goddard College's IMA program and is currently at work on a memoir chronicling the highs and lows of late-twentieth-century feminism as she lived them.
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