Language, images, metaphors, and stories have power to move, transform, and bring change. At Soul Bone℠, we start with creative process and connection to self, placing the writer before the written product. We believe that, as poets and writers, we have an exceptional ability to embrace the unknown. We are able to communicate the unknowable, imagine the unimaginable, say the unsayable. We are the voices of the future, pointing to new ways of seeing and other ways of being. We hold space and provide nourishment as well as challenge to get messy, connect to your intuition, and help you journey into the wilderness of your creative imagination where writing finds its pulse.
CHITRA
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning writer, activist, professor and speaker, and the author of 21 books such as Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, Before We Visit the Goddess, Palace of Illusions, The Forest of Enchantments, and The Last Queen. Her newest novel, Independence, depicts the experiences of three sisters in strife-torn Calcutta as India frees itself from the British yoke and received a 2024 American Book Award. She writes for adults and children.
Her work has been published in over 100 magazines and anthologies, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker,The Best American Short Stories and the O.Henry Prize Stories, and translated into 30 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Bengali, Hungarian, Turkish, Hindi and Japanese. Her work been made into films, plays and dance dramas, and performed as operas. Her awards include an American Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles award, a Premio Scanno, and a Light of India award. In 2015 The Economic Times included her in their List of 20 Most Influential Global Indian Women. She is the McDavid professor of Creative Writing in the internationally acclaimed Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and lives in Houston with her husband Murthy.
Divakaruni has been an activist in the fields of education and domestic violence and has been closely associated with the following nonprofits: Pratham, which educates underprivileged children in India, Akshaya Patra, which feeds Indian schoolchildren, and Daya and Maitri, which assist survivors of domestic violence in starting life anew. She also supports the Houston Food Bank.
Website: https://www.chitradivakaruni.com/
MONA
Mona Susan Power is the author of four books of fiction, including The Grass Dancer (a National Bestseller awarded a PEN/Hemingway Prize), Roofwalker (a collection of stories and essays awarded the Milkweed National Fiction Prize), Sacred Wilderness (a novel which received the Electa Quinney Award), and A Council of Dolls (winner of the Minnesota Book Award and High Plains Book Award, longlisted for the National Book Award and the Carol Shields Prize). She's a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She is also the recipient of several grants in support of her writing which include an Iowa Arts Fellowship, James Michener Fellowship, Radcliffe Bunting Institute Fellowship, Princeton Hodder Fellowship, USA Artists Fellowship, McKnight Fellowship, and Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies including The Best American Short Stories series, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, and Granta.
Mona is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (Iháŋktȟuŋwaŋna Dakhóta), born and raised in Chicago. During her childhood she was a member of the Chicago Indian Village movement, a group organized to protest the conditions of Native people lured to urban areas with promises of secure jobs and good housing, that seldom materialized. In 1979, a documentary following the experiences of this group was nominated for an Academy Award. Mona attended the Oscar ceremonies that year as a guest of the director, Jerry Aronson.
She currently lives in Minnesota, where she's working on other novels, including, The Year of Fury.
Website: https://www.monasusanpower.com/about
MARK
Mark Spragg is the author of Where Rivers Change Direction, and the novels The Fruit of Stone, An Unfinished Life, and Bone Fire. All four were top-ten Book Sense selections. His work has been translated into eleven languages.
Website: https://www.markspragg.com/
JENNIFER
J. Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet and the author of I Don’t Want to Be Understood (Alice James Books, 2024), finalist for the 2026 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a finalist for the 2025 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry and the 2025 Leslie Feinberg Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature; There Should Be Flowers (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016); and i’m alive / it hurts / i love it (Boost House, 2014). A creative writing instructor, she lives in California and teaches at MIU. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Nation, The Paris Review, American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
Website Poets.org: https://poets.org/poet/joshua-jennifer-espinoza
ELLEN
Ellen Bass’s poetry collections include, Indigo, Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Her poems appear frequently in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and many other journals. Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, and the California Arts Council Legacy Artist Fellowship, the Lambda Literary Award, and five Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!, and her nonfiction books include the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. A Chancellor Emerita of the Academy of American Poets, Bass founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and the Santa Cruz, California jails, and teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University.
Website: https://www.ellenbass.com/about/
DANUSHA
Danusha Laméris, a poet and essayist, was raised in Northern California and born to a Dutch father and Barbadian mother. Laméris is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize and was honored by the 2020 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She served as the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California. Some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. Her poem Small Kindnesses has been translated to multiple languages, quoted in O Magazine, turned into a short film, and was recently read by actress Helena Bonham Carter.
Her first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and recipient of the 2021 Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Her third and newest collection, Blade by Blade (2024) is now available through Copper Canyon Press.
Laméris has been on the faculty of Pacific University’s low residency MFA program. She founded Litfield, an online writing community where she currently teaches and has joined MIU’s MFA residencies online.
Website: https://www.danushalameris.com/
JAMES
James Crews is the author of The Book of What Stays (University of Nebraska Press, 2011). He was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He also edited the anthologies The Sacred Everyday: Poems of Peace and Stillness; Breathing Room: Poems of Rest and Retreat; Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Courage, and Self-Compassion; The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal; Kindness will Save the World: Stories of Compassion and Connection; How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope; Love is For All of Us: Poems of Tenderness and Belonging; Healing the Divide; Poems of Kindness and Connection, and more.
“I write and share poetry that can be understood and appreciated by people of all ages and backgrounds. I believe that reading and writing can be gateways to kindness, gratitude, wonder, and joy—tools for slowing down and reflecting in a sped-up world. Through my courses, talks, newsletter, and books, I help individuals become more centered and less stressed. I look forward to connecting with you!”
Website: https://www.jamescrews.net/
Books: https://www.jamescrews.net/books
NATHAN
Nathan McClain is a poet, editor, and educator living in Springfield, Massachusetts. He is the author of Scale (Four Way Books, 2017) and Previously Owned (Four Way Books, 2022), and his poems and prose have recently appeared, or are forthcoming, in New England Review, The Hopkins Review, Poetry Northwest, Poem-a-Day, and The Critical Flame, among others. He teaches at Hampshire College, and serves as Poetry Editor of The Massachusetts Review.
Website: https://www.nathanmcclain.com/
CAROLYN
Carolyn Holbrook is a writer, educator, and an advocate for the healing power of the arts. She is the founder and director of More Than a Single Story, a Twin Cities-based literary arts organization whose mission is to position the literary arts as a catalyst for cross-cultural healing and social justice. Her memoir, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify (UMN Press), won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. She is co-editor with David Mura of the anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (UMN Press), and is co-author with Arleta Little of MN civil rights icon, Dr. Josie R. Johnson’s memoir, Hope In the Struggle (UMN Press). She was a Contributing Editor, Water~Stone Review, Vol. 24, Hamline University 2021-2022. Her essays have appeared in numerous anthologies including Black Renaissance Noire (NYU 2008), Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (MNHS 2015) and A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota (MNHS 2016). Her TEDx talk, "The Life You Live Is the Legacy You Will Leave" was presented at Concordia College, Moorhead, MN in 2022. She has a poem forthcoming September 2026 in Witness: Poems to Address the Past, Present, and Future of Policing (Zest Books/Lerner Publishing Group), an essay forthcoming October 2026 in Nick of Time: Women Write about Art, Life & Aging (U of M Press), and an essay forthcoming January 2027 in American Occupation: Dispatches From Minnesota’s Resistance to ICE (U of M Press). Her writing has been supported by several MN State Arts Board grants. Her awards include the Minnesota Book Awards Kay Sexton Award, 2010; Hamline University Exemplary Teacher, 2014; 50 over 50, 2017; Celebrate the Sistas, 2020; Flowers Now!, 2024. She was the 2025 McKnight Distinguished Artist. She teaches at the Loft Literary Center and at other venues throughout the Twin Cities. She is the mother of 5, grandmother of 8 and great-grandmother of 5. https://www.carolynleeholbrook.com/
https://morethanasinglestory.com/
Website: https://www.carolynleeholbrook.com/
DIANE
Diane Wilson (Dakota) is a writer, educator, and bog steward who has published five award-winning books as well as essays in numerous publications.
Wilson’s 2021 novel, The Seed Keeper, (Milkweed Editions) received the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Fiction, was selected for the 2025-26 NEA Big Read, and is published in France. Her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past (Borealis Books) won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. Her 2011 nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life (Borealis Books) was awarded the 2012 Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Wilson's middle-grade biography: Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector, was an Honor selection for the 2022 American Indian Youth Literature Award. She is a co-author of a picture book, Where We Come From, (Lerner Publishing), winner of the 2023 Carter G. Woodson award.
Her most recent essays—which explore seed advocacy, food sovereignty, social justice, and cultural recovery—have been featured in acclaimed anthologies, including: Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations (2021); We Are Meant to Rise (2021); and A Good Time for the Truth (2016) as well as in notable environmental publications, including Orion: Nature and Culture and Emergence.
Wilson is the former Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous non-profit farm, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people.
Wilson is enrolled on the Sicangu Oyate (Rosebud) reservation in South Dakota, and is a Mdewakanton descendent. She lives near the St. Croix River in Minnesota, where she cares for an Indigenous seed garden, native perennials for pollinators, and a Tamarack bog.
Website: https://www.dianewilsonwords.com/
NICKOLE
Nickole Brown received her MFA from the Vermont College, studied literature at Oxford University, and was the editorial assistant for the late Hunter S. Thompson. She worked at Sarabande Books for ten years. Her first collection, Sister, a novel-in-poems, was published in 2007 with a new edition reissued in 2018. Her second book, a biography-in-poems about her grandmother called Fanny Says, came out from BOA Editions in 2015 and won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. The audio book of that collection came out in 2017. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and the Kentucky Arts Council. She was an Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for four years and was the co-editor of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series for ten. She’s taught at a number of places, including the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNCA and the Hindman Settlement School. She lives in Asheville, NC, where she periodically volunteers at a three different animal sanctuaries. Since 2016, she’s been writing about these animals, resisting the kind of pastorals that made her (and many of the working-class folks from the Kentucky that raised her) feel shut out of nature and the writing about it. Her work speaks in a Southern-trash-talking way about nature beautiful, damaged, dangerous, and in desperate need of saving. To Those Who Were Our First Gods, a chapbook of these first nine poems, won the 2018 Rattle Prize, and her essay-in-poems, The Donkey Elegies, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2020. In 2021, Spruce Books of Penguin Random House published Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire, a book she co-authored with Jessica Jacobs, with whom she co-founded the SunJune Literary Collaborative, and most recently she’s been contracted by Timber Press to write a nonfiction book about cicadas. In 2024, she was be the Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University, and she teaches every summer at the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program. Currently, she’s the President of the Hellbender Gathering of Poets, a nonprofit organization that aims to nurture a community hellbent on finding the words that protect and repair our climate changed world. Through an annual gathering that celebrates the power of poetry, they welcome writers and readers alike into a joyful rising—one galvanized by environmental science, awareness, courage, and hope.
Website: https://www.nickolebrown.org/