Ann Carter
Ann Carter lives on a small farm in the Flint Hills of north central Kansas. Her first (and hopefully not last) book, Spiders from Heaven, recounts through journal entries, emails, and poetry the adoption and single parenting of her two daughters. Her favorite writing exercise is blogging a monthly essay. Among many possible future projects, she wants to finish a children’s book featuring Frannie, a girls who dreams of riding a pinto...
Joy Castro
Joy Castro’s memoirs include Island of Bones (U of Nebraska, 2012) and The Truth Book (2005; U of Nebraska, 2012). Her other works include the literary thrillers Hell or High Water (St.Martin’s, 2012) and Nearer Home (St. Martin’s, 2013) as well as the short story collection How Winter Began (U of Nebraska, forthcoming). Joy was the winner of a Nebraska Book Award and an International Latino Book Award and a...
Breena Clarke
Breena Clarke, currently a resident of Jersey City, has written three historical novels. She has recently completed Angels Make Their Hope Here, set in an imagined mixed-race community in 19th century New Jersey. Breena’s debut novel, River, Cross My Heart (1999) was an Oprah Book Club selection and her critically reviewed second novel, Stand The Storm, set in mid-19th century Washington, D.C., was chosen by the Washington Post Book...
Cheryl Clarke
Cheryl Clarke is the author of four books of poetry, Narratives: poems in the tradition of black women (1982); Living as a Lesbian (1986), Humid Pitch (1989), Experimental Love (1993), the critical study, After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (2005), and her collected works The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry 1980-2005 (2006). She self-published a mini-chapbook entitled, Your Own Lovely Bosom, in 2013 and 2014; and...
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. Retreat Photographer; Consultant.
Esther Cohen
Esther Cohen is a published novelist and poet. She is a book doctor, teacher, cultural activist, and lover of words. Words and good stories have always been part of her work. She’s taught writing at The New School and Manhattanville College, been a book publisher in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, a gallery curator, a labor union activist, and a creative director. As Executive Director of Bread and Roses, a national union cultural...
Sunny Cooper
Sunny Cooper is a writer, editor, and consultant with Follow the Buffalo, a nomadic studio designed to assist storytellers in reaching their publishing horizon. Sunny is a member of the San Diego Writers and Publishers Association, Certified Professional Writers and Editors, Project Eve, and the Editorial Freelancers Association. Her undergraduate studies were in English and Creative Writing, and she has lived in Budapest, a horse...
Melissa Coss Aquino
Melissa Coss Aquino is a writer and an Assistant Professor of Language and Literature in the English department at Bronx Community College where she serves as the co-faculty advisor for Thesis, the Literary Journal of BCC. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing at City College and is currently pursuing her PhD in English at The CUNY Graduate Center. Her personal essay “Una Sinverguenza” (Shameless) was published in Callaloo, and...
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...
Shari Crane
Dr. Shari Crane is a speaker and medical author with a holistic psychiatry practice on Coronado Island. Dr. Crane attended medical school at the Mayo Clinic, where she served on the Mayo Foundation Equal Opportunities Committee and was President of the Mayo Senior Class. She completed Internship at Stanford University, a Research Fellowship at Wake Forrest University, Diagnostic Radiology at UCSD, and Psychiatry Residency and...
Teri Crane
Dr. Teri Crane is a writer, educator, and marriage and family therapist. Besides her own writing, (including a memoir, We Never Used the F Word, a novel, Base Ball: Coming to the Show, a recently completed historical novel, What the Women Carried West), and the completion of the haiku a day for a year challenge, Teri teaches creative writing. She volunteers this at a local Senior Center and teaches creative writing at the district...
Tracey Cravens-Gras
A life-long lover of the written word, I studied English at the University of Cincinnati, and graduated with honors from the Ohio State University in 1997. After a miraculous decade raising two kids, and a family relocation to the desert southwest, I began working for A Room of Her Own as Darlene Chandler Bassett’s personal assistant in 2008. Author of thousands of emails and the rare and wildly-scrawled thank you note, I savor the...
Kristi Crutchfield Cox
Kristi Crutchfield Cox lives in Southern Oklahoma with her husband of thirteen years and their three dogs. By day, she navigates the minds of women and teens, helping them find their own definitions of peace and resolution, hope and new paths. During eves, her home resounds with a tango, as she sits on her bouncy ball weaving tales which reflect women’s experiences. Pieces of her soul linger in each line. She travels to Taos as...
Nicelle Davis
Nicelle Davis was the recipient of the 2013 AROHO Retreat 9 3/4 Fellowship. She runs a free online poetry workshop at The Bees’ Knees Blog and serves as Editor at Large for The Los Angeles Review as well as Poetry Editor at Large for Connotation Press. Her second book, Becoming Judas, was released from Red Hen Press in 2013. Her first collection of poems, Circe, is available from Lowbrow Press at Amazon.com, and her third...
Thelma de Castro
Thelma Virata de Castro is a Filipino American playwright and mom. Her work is included in the Asian American Women Playwrights Archive at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She received a residency at Hedgebrook and attended the 25th Anniversary Alumnae Reunion Celebration. Her work was featured in Guerilla Girls on Tour’s WE ARE THEATRE, and she is a proud supporter of the Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative. She is...
Peggy Dobreer
Peggy Dobreer came to poetry through dance and experimental theatre. She has one full-length collection, In The Lake of Your Bones, released in March 2012 by Moon Tide Press. She is a long time educator, offering her unique approach to kinesthetically generated poetry and performance, THE E=Mc2BODIED WORD. She also curates The RwIrGiHtTe READ at Stories Books in Los Angeles and FIRST FRIDAYS at The Rapp Salo(o)n in Santa...
Martha Donovan
Martha Andrews Donovan, author of the chapbook Dress Her in Silk (Finishing Line Press 2009), has been teaching at the secondary and college level for over thirty years. Her poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction have been published in varied venues. Her essay “Dangerous Archaeology: A Daughter’s Search for Her Mother (and Others)” (with photographer Autumn E. Monsees) was named a “Notable Essay” by The Best American Essays 2013. Her...
Jeanette Eberhardy
Jeanette Luise Eberhardy is a teacher, writer, and storyteller. She serves as the Program Director for 1st Year Writing, and Assistant Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. In October, 2014, at the 17th Global WIN Conference in Berlin, Eberhardy gave the opening address to 1,000 women leaders: “Your Story Matters.” Eberhardy has taught storytelling skills to emerging leaders, including youth, women in business, global...
Camille Endacaott
Camille was first involved with AROHO as a public relations intern in 2013 and is thrilled to return as a supporting intern for the 2015 Retreat. Originally from South Pasadena, Camille recently graduated from Azusa Pacific University with a degree in communication. She often strayed, however, into creative nonfiction writing, public affairs reporting, and studying the literature of Flannery O’Connor. She reads more than she...
Lisa Estus
Lisa Estus is a fiction writer and poet. Her work appears in Puerto del Sol, Rain City Review, Reed Magazine and other literary journals. An entrepreneur from an early age, Estus has owned and operated a natural candle, soap and toiletries company, marketing consulting practice, jewelry design business and snow shoveling service. She briefly considered starting a vintage hosiery e-business but opted instead to consolidate interests...