Elisabeth Finch
Alum 2002Elisabeth Finch is a television writer, playwright and essayist. Her full-length script, But Dust and Ash, focused on women’s resistance movements during the Holocaust and received two Carnegie Mellon research grants, the National Playwriting Award from Wichita State University and was produced at the Midwestern Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.
Caroline Casey
Alum 2002Caroline Casey is the host and creator of The Visionary Activist Show. her Astrological Interpretation of World News and Politics has been sought in full-page interviews in The Washington Post, a full length cover feature also in the Post’s style section, on the front page of the Providence Journal, the New Bedford Standard Times, the London Sunday Times, the San Francisco Examiner and in an interview with James Ridgeway for the Village Voice. She has written astrological-political essays for Washingtonian magazine as well as an astrological-political column for George Magazine, and covered the 2000 election for National Journal’s Hotline.
Judith Arcana
Alum 2002Judith Arcana is a writer of poems, stories, essays and books, and a longtime teacher of literature, writing and women’s studies. She’s taught in high schools, colleges, libraries, living rooms, a state prison and a county jail. Judith’s poems, stories and essays have been published widely for more than forty-five years, on paper and online in literary journals, political, cultural and medical magazines, newspapers, academic journals, anthologies and textbooks.
Michael Ableman
Alum 2002, Alum 2023Michael Ableman is an author, organic farmer, educator and advocate for sustainable agriculture. Michael has been farming organically since the early 1970s and is considered one of the pioneers of the organic farming and urban agriculture movements. He is a frequent lecturer to audiences all over the world and the winner of numerous awards for his work. As an author, Michael has written and photographed four acclaimed books which have been distributed around the world. He is the co-founder and director of Sole Food Street Farms, one of North America’s largest urban agriculture enterprises established to provide employment to individuals in Vancouver, British Columbia who are managing poverty and addiction.
Louise Steinman
Alum 2002Louise Steinman is a writer, artist, and literary curator. She was founder and curator of the celebrated ALOUD literary series at the Los Angeles Public Library. She was the recipient of the 2019 Chora Prize for lifetime achievement in the arts from Annenberg Foundation. Her essays have been published widely, most recently in Los Angeles Review of Books.
Marilyn Berlin Snell
Alum 2002Marilyn Berlin Snell is an independent journalist whose work focuses on the environment and politics. She was staff writer for Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, from 2000 to 2008 and founding director of the magazine's Investigative Journalism Project. Her freelance work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Mother Jones, The Nation, and Discover.
Marilyn Sewell
Alum 2002The Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell, an accomplished Unitarian Universalist minister, is known for her dynamic speaking, writing, teaching, and her justice work. After careers as an English teacher, a clinical social worker and a TV on-the-air personality giving advice she went to seminary and brought her work experience together as the Senior Minister of the First Unitarian Church of Portland Oregon. She is the editor of two celebrated collections of women’s poetry focusing on the spiritual and she has contributed multiple articles to Huffington Post and she is one of the poetry editors for the Harvard Divinity Bulletin. She holds master’s degrees in English literature, social work and divinity and a PhD in Theology and Literature from the Graduate Theological Union and the University of California at Berkeley.
Tommy Petersen
Alum 2002Tommy Petersen, Development Director of Wildlands CPR, has worked as a fundraiser for not-for-profit environmental groups for eleven years. Tommy is also a talented and published nature writer, with essays published in ISLE, Orion Afield, Northern Lights and Camas: An Environmental Journal.
Susan Naimark
Alum 2002Susan Naimark is an independent consultant and trainer who integrates many years of experience in nonprofit community development, grassroots leadership development, public education and racial justice organizing. She was a founder of the Boston Parent Organizing Network and a 2-term member of the school board for the City of Boston. She currently serves as co-chair of the board of directors for Community Change, Inc., a Boston-based racial justice education and organizing group. She is the author of The Education of a White Parent: Wrestling with Race and Opportunity in the Boston Public Schools and is a part-time faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, Graduate School of Education.
Anne Mavor
Alum 2002Anne Mavor is an artist and writer based in Portland, Oregon. Her work combines storytelling, research, performance, visual imagery and collaboration to illuminate social issues. Since 2010, paintings from her Mounds and Stones series have been exhibited in Oregon, Washington and Massachusetts. Anne has a BA in art from Kirkland College and an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University, LA.
Barbara Gates
Alum 2002Barbara Gates is a writer, developmental editor and writing coach. For 31 years, Barbara was Co-Editor in Chief of the Buddhist journal Inquiring Mind, which she co-founded with Wes Nisker. She is co-editor of The Best of Inquiring Mind and author of Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place. She taught high school for twenty years, beginning at the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, co-founding The Group School, a community high school for low-income students in Cambridge and eventually at the Urban School of San Francisco.
Alex Frankel
Alum 2002Alex Frankel is a journalist and business strategist who lives in San Francisco. His articles have appeared in Wired, Fast Company, The New York Times Magazine and Outside.