TWO TREES WRITERS - Key Persons
Bhanu is the author of six full-length collections which move between poetry and prose. In 2020, she won the Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry, as well as a Chomondeley Award. Her work explores themes of belonging and unbelonging through fables of human-animal experience, and the textures/sensations produced when genre collapses or sheds off. Is it possible to make new work from this detritus, or from the stories we told each other as were falling asleep? Bhanu has taught creative writing in university settings for twenty years, but also in retreat settings, museums, at human rights' conferences, and on riverbanks. She works with writers of all genres and at all stages of their process, to make writing feel possible again.
Bhanu offers workshops that combine meditation practice and experimental prompts. She also offers a one hour palmistry session: a close study of images and lines that invites questions about writing but also, the life in which the writing is being made.
Bhanu Kapil follows a film crew to the Bengal jungle to re-encounter the true account of two girls found living with wolves in 1921. Taking as its source text the diary of the missionary who strove to rehabilitate these orphans-through language instruction and forcible correction of supinated limbs-HUMANIMAL functions as a healing mutation for three bodies and a companion poiesis for future physiologies. Through wolfgirls Kamala and Amala, there is a grafting: what scars down into the feral opens out also into the fierce, into a remembrance of Kapil's father. The humanimal text becomes one in which personal and postcolonial histories cross a wilderness to form supported metabiology.
Bhanu is the author of six full length books: How to Wash a Heart (Pavilion Poetry, 2020), The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (Kelsey Street Press, 2001), Incubation: a space for monsters (Leon Works, 2006; Kelsey Street Press, 2021), humanimal [a project for future children] (Kelsey Street Press, 2009), Schizophrene (Nightboat Books, 2011), and Ban en Banlieue (Nightboat Books, 2016). She is also the author of many chapbooks, most recently a critical-creative pamphlet, Threads, co-authored with Sandeep Parmar and Nisha Ramayya
Bhanu is currently an artist by-fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, where she is…writing! In 2020, she was the recipient of two literary awards for her body of work: a Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry from Yale University, and a Cholmondeley Award from The Society of Authors (UK).
If you want to reach out, send me a note in the form on the right. If you would like to be alerted when new Palmistry sessions are available, please let me know by checking the box at the bottom of the form so we can you can put your name on our notification list. (If you want to subscribe to updates from Two Trees, this is a different list.
Elena is the award-winning author of two poetry collections and a short story collection, as well as the editor of a poetry anthology. She writes about outsider experiences and what it might mean to belong. Her work also explores the unexpected places of lightness and darkness that highlight our humanity. Elena has taught in an MFAW program for 18 years, and she also has extensive experience as a retreat and workshop facilitator. Her approach is about customizing the experience to suit each writer's process, with an emphasis on increasing confidence, cultivating a positive relationship between vision and revision, and writing into the mystery of the work.
Elena leads writing workshops and intensives, and is available for coaching and manuscript consultations.
Elena offers individual Coaching Sessions, and Manuscript Development and Review. You will also find her name popping up in our generative workshops and an occasional small group intensive. Check out the WRITE WITH US tab in the menu for sessions you can sign up for today. If you are interested in individual mentoring, first take a look at the descriptions of our coaching and manuscript services in the drop down menu above to find out what to expect and decide which process is right for you. Then come back to the Personal page for the mentor of your choice and Send Her A Message in the contact form at the bottom of her page. Each of our mentors will work with you to customize your plan to your project, schedule and needs. Each is available on a limited basis, depending on her own writing schedule. We look forward to hearing from you!
Elena Georgiou is a dazzlingly good writer. The thirteen stories in The Immigrant's Refrigerator are stirring, wise, and keenly alert to the longings and contradictions that impel their beguiling characters. (John McManus, author of Fox Tooth Heart and Bitter Milk)
Elena Georgiou is the author of the short-story collection The Immigrant's Refrigerator, and the poetry collections Rhapsody of the Naked Immigrants and mercy mercy me. She is also co-editor (with Michael Lassell) of the poetry anthology, The World In Us. Her first book won a Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the Publishing Triangle Award. Her third book of short fiction was a finalist for the Vermont Book Award and the New American Voices Award. She has also received a NYFA fellowship, a VCCA fellowship, and an Astraea Foundation Award.
Elena was the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard College in Vermont and Washington. She has also served as a judge for a number of literary organizations, as well as serving as the poetry editor for two literary journals. She is currently an editor at Tarpaulin Sky Press, and an affiliated faculty member at the Rubenstein School of the University of Vermont.
Elena spent the first twenty-seven years of her life in London, England. Since then, she has lived in the US - first in New York, now in Vermont. To read more about Elena, please visit her website at elenageorgiou.com.
I am available for a limited number of coaching mentorships and manuscript consultations. If you are interested in working with me, send me a note telling me about your project to see if we would be a good fit.
Reiko is the award-winning author of two novels and a memoir. She writes about family, motherhood, race, war, trauma, and is keenly interested in history and secrets and how they affect the ultimate story: The one we tell ourselves so we can know who we are. She has taught in retreat settings and an MFA in Creative Writing program for over 16 years. Her approach combines intuition and logic; planning and divination; impulse and revision.
Reiko leads writing workshops and intensives, and is available for coaching and manuscript consultations. She also does tarot readings for books and writers.
Sherri L. Smith is the author of nine award-winning fiction and nonfiction books for young people including the 2021 Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Golden Kite Award winner, The Blossom and the Firefly and the California Book Awards Gold Medalist, Flygirl. Her novels appear on multiple state reading lists and have been named Amelia Bloomer, Junior Library Guild, Children's Book Council, Southern California Independent Booksellers Award, and American Library Association Best Books for Young People selections. Currently, Sherri teaches in MFA in Children's Writing Program at Hamline University. She is the 2021 Mina Hohenburg Darden Visiting Professor at Old Dominion University. Sherri holds a certificate in the Art of Archetypal Fairy Tale Analysis from the Assisi Institute, as well as certificates in Applied Mythology and Enchantivism-a form of "activism for introverts" that uses deep storytelling, mythology, dreams and the environment to enact positive change in the world-from Pacifica Graduate Institute. In addition to public speaking, Sherri offers creativity courses as a member of the Two Trees Writers' Collaborative and the founder of Story Forest, a liminal space where writers follow the old tales to find their own path.
Sherri is the award-winning author of eight young adult and middle grade novels as well as nonfiction for younger readers. She writes about identity, family, history, and what it means to be human on this swiftly tilting planet. Sherri has taught in MFA and university extension programs, creative writing conferences and private writing schools for thirteen years. She is deeply interested in the liminal space between the imaginal and the "real" world. She's also a story structure nut. Her approach is to understand the bones of a story, and to tap into its mythic marrow.