Vertical Answers
Aug01

Vertical Answers

 At the 2013 Retreat closing ceremony,  Bhanu Kapil, writer of paradigm-shattering poetry and prose (and 2013 Retreat Small Group Facilitator; Mind Stretch and Desert Delight Contributor) shared her immense talent for creative alchemy by compiling, over the course of the week, words from the approximately 100 women in attendance. What resulted was “Vertical Answers,” a poem whose generative and synergistic energy clearly...

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Lauren K. Alleyne
Aug01

Lauren K. Alleyne

Lauren K. Alleyne is an assistant professor of English and the Poet-in-Residence at the University of Dubuque. Her essays and poems have been published in several journals and anthologies including: The Crab Orchard Review, Black Arts Quarterly, The Caribbean Writer, The Cimarron Review, Growing Up Girl, and Gathering Ground, among others. Her work has been awarded numerous prizes and awards, including an Atlantic Monthly Student...

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Mona Alvarado Frazier
Aug01

Mona Alvarado Frazier

Mona AlvaradoFrazier believes that a story isn’t only about a happy ending it’s about the journey. Strong women, self-identity, life challenges, and resiliency make their way into her three novels in progress.  After graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Mona began a career with the California Department of Corrections as a Counselor working with offenders ages 13-25 years of age and ended it as a Captain,...

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Eunice Lee An
Aug01

Eunice Lee An

Eunice Lee An is a veteran of magazine and book publishing, having worked at the New York Times, Random House, Primedia, and Hearst. She discovered her love for writing short stories and flash fiction several years ago. For the past two years, she has been working on a piece of historical fiction, based on her father’s unfinished memoir.

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Martha Andrews Donovan
Aug01

Martha Andrews Donovan

Martha Andrews Donovan, author of Dress Her in Silk (Finishing Line Press), is a member of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project, the New Hampshire Humanities Council “Humanities to Go” speakers bureau, and a regional group of AROHO women writers she first met at Ghost Ranch in 2011. Her writing has appeared recently in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Poets’ Touchstone (which awarded her First Place in their national contest), and Shadow and...

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Dodici Azpadu
Aug01

Dodici Azpadu

MFA Writer’s Workshop, University of Iowa, with José Donoso. PhD Pacific Western University. Taught at Gannon University, Erie PA. University of New Mexico Honors College. Central New Mexico Community College. UNM Continuing Education: Osher Lifelong Learning Fiction Publications include: Saturday Night in the Prime of Life and Goat Song (Aunt Lute/Spinsters Ink) and subsequently Onlywoman (London, England). Living Room (Neuma...

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Lauren Baldwin
Aug01

Lauren Baldwin

Lauren Baldwin completed her MFA in Fiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2010 and her JD at the University of New Mexico School of Law in 1992. She is a Judicial Hearing Officer in the Family Court division of the Second Judicial District Court in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lauren is the author of Pull the Lever, AROHO’s theme poem (alternative to a theme song), written in the middle of the night at Ghost Ranch during an...

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Gillian Barlow
Aug01

Gillian Barlow

Gillian Barlow:  I am a writer and architect from Australia. As an architect I work with Aboriginal communities throughout Australia doing houses and health buildings. As a writer my work borrows from my architecture with a strong need for form but tends to be experimental – a play with memoir, theory and fiction. I recently completed a PhD in communications and Media. I live with my partner and 13 year old son in Sydney. I am...

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Mary Beath
Aug01

Mary Beath

Mary Beath works at the confluence of science, art, and nature. After she earned degrees in zoology (Duke) and printmaking (Rhode Island School of Design), she lived for ten years in New York’s East Village. In 1989 she moved to Albuquerque where she is the proprietor of an award-winning illustration/design/writing studio focused on projects that concern the natural world. She began writing seriously in the early 1990s. Her poetry...

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Liz Bedell
Aug01

Liz Bedell

Liz Bedell lives in Northampton, MA. For the past twenty years, she has been a high school English teacher and administrator, immersing herself within a school community. But next September, if her courage holds, she will not be in a school but will instead be focusing on her writing, while tutoring/ teaching, writing coaching and editing in various guises to pay the bills. Clearing space for writing in this way feels tantamount to...

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Bridget Birdsall
Aug01

Bridget Birdsall

Bridget Birdsall (MFA Vermont College) is an author, artist, teacher, and a gifted intuitive healer. She seeks to connect hearts through words and art, and to help those writers with underrepresented VOICES get their work out into the world. Bridget made a mid-life decision to overcome dyslexic challenges and pursue her passion for writing, especially Young Adult (YA) lit and poetry. Today, she is the recipient of numerous awards and...

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Ginny Bitting
Aug01

Ginny Bitting

Ginny Bitting was born in Mystic, CT, and still lives there. She attended local schools, until high school when her family moved to England she attended boarding school.  After college, she met her husband, Ken, singing in the Westerly Chorus, and had a daughter, Adrienne, who also joined the chorus. They sailed every summer from Fishers Island Sound to Cape Cod and then to Maine with their cat Pearl. She is still hard at work on her...

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Jana Branch
Aug01

Jana Branch

Jana Branch writes poetry, short stories, essays and screenplays. To keep a roof over her head, she consults in brand and sustainability communications. She previously worked as a typographer, editor, ghostwriter and cultural trends analyst. She’s old enough to remember the world before computers and isn’t nostalgic for typewriters.   She believes in “and” (not “either-or”), seeks variety (not balance) and prefers being seen without...

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Mandy Brown
Aug01

Mandy Brown

After finishing an undergraduate fiction thesis, Mandy Brown graduated summa cum laude from Texas State University with a BA in Professional Writing. She leapt into motherhood and her writing and found that grafting the two is extremely challenging but well worth the rewards. Mandy currently works from home as a writer, freelance book editor, and the Managing Editor for eSteampunk, an e-magazine and Amazon bestseller. Internationally...

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Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz
Aug01

Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz

Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz is a cultural worker and documentary artist in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As an independent community radio producer and host, she works in artistic and Native communities using the power of narrative as a transformative tool for social change. New Mexico Woman Writer Fellow; Desert Delight Contributor.

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Darlene Chandler Bassett
Aug01

Darlene Chandler Bassett

Darlene Chandler Bassett spent two decades as a corporate executive with famed entrepreneur and arts patron, Eli Broad.  Concurrent with her corporate management positions, Bassett was also Board Chair of The California Abortion Rights Action League-South, from 1984 to 1991. Bringing her unique combination of corporate and non-profit management experience to the arts, Bassett now focuses her efforts on women writers and artists.  She...

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Anita Clearfield
Aug01

Anita Clearfield

Anita Clearfield is an artist, writer and filmmaker. Her credits include several documentaries on PBS, including “Olivia Records: More Than Music,” (Producer/Director) and “Angela Davis:  Walls Into Bridges,”  (Assoc. Producer/Editor). She produced/directed “Vacation Nicaragua,” garnering a Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, Best Documentary at the San Antonio Film Festival and Latin American Film Festival,...

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Jamie Clifford
Aug01

Jamie Clifford

Jamie Clifford is a photographer specializing in commissioned candid, documentary-style Portraiture & Event Coverage. Her approach is graceful :: unobtrusive :: instinctual.  She has a keen understanding of light and composition. Her Art Collections have themes simplicity, spirituality, sensuality, abstraction, space and satire. She lives in Cedar Crest, New Mexico. AROHO Media Coordinator; Retreat Photographer;...

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Judith Speizer Crandell
Aug01

Judith Speizer Crandell

I have recently lost my writing mentor and close friend, Suzanne Byerley.  I am taking her spirit – along with those of Georgia O’Keeffe and Virginia Woolf – with me as inspiration for this conference.   As for my background, I am a seasoned, award-winning writer of both fiction and nonfiction. I’ve received a residency at Yaddo and a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Recently, I won two Raymond Carver Short...

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Teri Crane
Aug01

Teri Crane

Teri Crane lives and writes in her native California where she retired from a 35 year career in teaching, and also a career as a Marriage and Family therapist. Her 2010 MFA thesis, We Never Used the F Word, awaits publication.  Teri’s current project is an historical novel about two women who come West on wagon trains in 1865.  Teri continues to instruct teachers in online courses for LA County Office of Education.  She counts...

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