My Work

Photo taken Summer 2022 by Photographer Micah Mackenzie for the Art in the Heart poetic grief circle project being funded by the City of Asheville. The mask was hand-made by Artist Lydia Nichole.

Education

Honorary Degree in Mass Communications, University of North Carolina at Asheville

Narrative Medicine Graduate Certificate, Lenoir Rhyne University

Certified Nursing Assistant & trained Bereavement and Postpartum Doula

Notable Publications

My work has been published in the following:

  • 2023 County Lines Literary Journal
  • The Porch Literary Magazine
  • Mountain Xpress
  • The Laurel of Asheville
  • Hot Springs Tourism & Welcome Center
  • Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine
  • Food Life Magazine
  • Asheville Grit

My Work Through The Years

Between the years 2012 and 2018, much of my writing took place within a start-up supporting small businesses and nonprofits and later as part of United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County. Much of my early freelance work was focused in community-oriented stories and published in Western North Carolina publications that centered them. What I consider my work didn’t deepen and take shape until 2019 as I came into right-relationship with my ancestry and truly learning to wield writing as a therapeutic tool for self and in community.

Our Careful Tending, poetic grief performance for Asheville Fringe Arts Festival — March 2023

Our Careful Tending is a poem that was written and shared in a poetic grief circle last fall, holding space for the grief and harm of the past while weaving collective hope and care for the present-day and into the future as a community. Participants were called to recite the poem as an incantation, as a call to grieve and heal alongside the poet while weaving symbolic ribbons of black and white in unity around these words as prayer.

Publication of Appalachian Lullabies — February 2023

This 54-page self-published collection of poetry is comprised of 46 poems and one essay with cover art by Artist Jackie Rubino. The poems are teachings from nature, weaving her infinite reminders to slow-in and listen. They are conversations and meditations on talking with the animals and ancestors that hold and pattern a way through the more than human world. A handful were published in a limited edition publication titled Soft With Me published in 2021, yet most were written in 2023 while studying writing and story as medicine.

Poetic Grief Circle Project selected for Art in the Heart by City of Asheville — October 2022

This project was focused in using poetry as a form of prayer, poetry in service of healing for a grant-funded project through Art in the Heart and the City of Asheville. For this project, I organized a roaming public grief ceremony in which I carried a ceremonial mask created by a local artist and read a poem centered on how we collectively grieve and heal using nature as a metaphor and guide.

Publication of Collection of Poetry ‘Letters for Tallulah’- December 2021

In the fall of 2021, I launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the publication of a body of work titled Letters for Tallulah. Several of the poems had been published in the small chapbook publication of ‘Soft With me’ the year prior. After hitting my funding goal, I was able to print 100 copies, which were sold in indie bookstores throughout Western North Carolina. The Mountain Xpress featured my work and interviewed me about the process of self-publishing. The UNC Asheville Alumna Association also featured my work as part of their Alumni Spotlights.

Hominy Rising Arts & Awareness — June, 2021

In celebration of Hominy Creek Greenway and the Friends of the Hominy Creek Greenway volunteer nonprofit group helping sustain this treasured local resource, a selection of artists were chosen to create work and share in a two day celebration. My piece, ‘Interweaving: Self, Story, Nature’ represents the feelings and words that find us in nature, the reciprocity of that feeling in return to her, and the hope that these words land and nurture and inspire you. It invites participants as they walk to allow the words to interweave into their experience and take note of the words that find them. It features an old medicine cabinet with healing words from a selection of poetry painted onto stones tucked within and around for participants to take in and interact with.

NC Artist Support Grant Funds Release of Chap Book ‘Soft With Me’ — Fall 2020

A North Carolina Artist Support Grant funded the small batch creation and release of a collection of poetry titled Soft With Me. A local printer printed 50 copies which were then hand-stitched bound by local book binder Azalea Bindery and sold in indie bookstores across Western North Carolina.

Teachers + Trainings That Have Been Deeply Educational & Impactful to Me + My Work

  • Sowing Post Capitalist Seeds: 14-week online course a foundational learning circle to explore the origins of capitalism and the possibilities for other systems as each person develops their unique practice to seed into their lives and communities. Collectively we explore body liberation, money, mutual aid, land ethics, collectivism, and spiritual practices among other topics and examine topics from socio-economic, historical, personal, and interpersonal lenses. 
  • Racial Equity Institute: REI is comprised of an alliance of trainers, organizers, and institutional leaders who have devoted themselves to the work of creating racially equitable organizations and systems. They help individuals and organizations develop tools to challenge patterns of power and grow equity.  I participated in their two-day Phase 1 training in 2020–  “designed to develop the capacity of participants to better understand racism in its institutional and structural forms.
  • Inviting Abundance ‘Holding Space for Pregnancy Loss Training’: Inviting Abundance brings their backgrounds as researchers, teachers, and grieving parents to their work of teaching and holding creative grief + healing practices. In the perinatal loss training, we learned the devastating birth disparity and inequity for birthing persons of color alongside how to support birthing persons and families through the loss of a child.
  • SeekHealing + the Listening Training: SeekHealing’s mission is to make experiences of meaningful human connection universally available and accessible, building communities that generate positive social health outcomes and reduce deaths of despair. I attended their Listener Training in the fall of 2021. Listening Training is administered as a six-week online class teaching participants a new way of relating with each other in a world where authentic relationships are scarce. These skills are supportive to those in need of active support in recovery from trauma or addiction, as well as friends and family of such folks, or anyone seeking more meaningful connection in their life.