SOREN LIT

Sonia Leigh- SOREN LIT 2023

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SOREN LIT...A Southern Renaissance of women, femmes, and/or non-binary creatives exploring the lingering South...

Sonia Leigh’s musical style cannot be put in a box. From Hip-Hop to Country to Pop and Rock and Roll. Her Southern Ground debut album, 1978 December, was where Leigh made her country catapult. The first single "My Name Is Money," hit Top 40 at US Country Radio. She also co-wrote the Zac Brown Band #1 singles "Goodbye in Her Eyes" and "Sweet Annie". Leigh currently canopies several projects to umbrella her different styles, such as hip hop/rock duo TYGR TYGR AKA ELYVN: ELYVN with Daphne Willis (Position Music). Other projects include low-fi 90’s hip-hop duo Indica Girlz, and the mysterious grunge-pop project Rob The Man, all pending follow-up releases in 2023. Leigh has toured the world with the likes of the Zac Brown Band, Blackberry Smoke, Amos Lee, Melissa Etheridge, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Joan Jett, and many more.  Amongst all of this, Sonia Leigh has been writing and in the studio working on her next solo record.  The hard-hitting first single “Thin Ice,” coming out on Feb 24 2023, is fueled with pure rock and roll energy that calls for burning down the barriers around one’s self to realize their full potential. Sonia Leigh's Website: www.sonialeigh.com

Producer and Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

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SOREN LIT...A Southern Renaissance of women, femmes, and/or non-binary creatives exploring the lingering South...

SOREN LIT. 2023: Verlena Johnson, MFA

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Producer & Founding Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

Verlena L. Johnson was born in Chicago and grew up in Madison and Beloit Wisconsin.  She earned a B.A. in Sculpture and a M.A. in Afro-American Studies with an emphasis in Art History from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and a M.F.A. in Sculpture from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Verlena has also studied wood carving with Ghanaian Master Wood-carvers, as well as, at the Haystack Mountain School of Craft and Penland School of Craft.

She has exhibited her artwork in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Oakland, amongst other places.  Her artwork has appeared on the cover of the book Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Toni Morrison and the journal Sinister Wisdom.  She has taught studio art and art history to children and adults in community centers and colleges.

Her children’s book, The Adventures of Kai and the Magical Machines was published in 2018.  Verlena’s current book project is a children’s picture book about a little boy named Jimmie in rural Mississippi in the 1940s.

Emily Bilman, PhD is a poet-scholar who lives and writes Geneva, Switzerland. Her dissertation, The Psychodynamics of Poetry: Poetic Virtuality and Oedipal Sublimation in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot and Paul Valéry, with her poetry translations, was published by Lambert Academic in 2010 and Modern Ekphrasis in 2013 by Peter Lang, CH. Her poetry books, A Woman By A Well (2015), Resilience (2015), The Threshold of Broken Waters (2018), and Apperception (2020) were published by Troubador, UK. “The Tear-Catcher” won the first prize in depth poetry by The New York Literary Magazine. Poems were published in Deronda Review, The London Magazine, San Antonio Review, The Wisconsin Review, Expanded Field, Poetics Research, The Blue Nib, Tipton Poetry Journal, North of Oxford Journal, Otherwise Engaged Magazine, Literary Heist, The High Window, Wild Court, Remington Review, Book of Matches, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Poets Live Anthology 4, OxMag, San Diego Poetry Anthology, Contemporary Poetry 2022, Ballast Journal, Soren Lit, Southern Arizona Press Anthologies, Poetry Salzburg Review. She blogs on her website. http://www.emiliebilman.wix.com/emily-bilman

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Producer & Founding Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

SOREN LIT 2023- Sharon Daugherty

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Sharon Daugherty is a Philadelphia born, Atlanta based painter and sketch artist. The self-taught artist

uses abstract expressionism to examine and honor human experience and how we interact with our

environments. Her subjects range from abstract portraits and human figures to urban and natural

landscapes. She is a colorist who loves highly textural work and uses paint, ink, charcoal, and other

materials on a variety of surfaces. Her work is highly intuitive, reacting to what the canvas gives her as

she works.

Sharon’s work is collected by people across the country. As she finds painting a highly therapeutic

medium for herself, she also works with students to help them discover the power of creative

expression. Sharon is part of a family of creatives – a husband who is a writer and musician, and two

daughters, one a sculptor, and one a singer songwriter. She works out of her home studio where her

family gives her constant energy, inspiration, and support.

www.sorenlit.com

SOREN LIT Founding Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

Twitter: @LitSoren

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SOREN LIT 2022- Ilina Singh and Asha Leong (Mother & Daughter)

Ilina Singh has already lived several lifetimes.  Ilina was born in Mathrua, India lived in Wellington, Aotearoa and currently lives in Wendell, MA.  Ilina is a poet, lifelong journaler and has a MFA in Poetry from Bennington College.  Ilina identifies as a feminist, lesbian and student of the Earth.  Her poetry is a song that melds the reality of Indian women's lives with the complexity of immigration and queer identity.  In her spare time Ilina feeds birds, dotes upon her grandchildren and watches mushrooms grow.

Asha Leong is healer, coach and trainer focused on helping queer, trans, people of color thrive.  Asha has a deep passion for helping people heal, understand, create, and manifest their personal vision of sexual liberation.  Asha is an ordained earth based healer with over a decade of training in her craft.  Asha specializes in horoscope readings, spiritual coaching, and chakra energy healings. Asha founded the Sexual Liberation Collective which is an intentional collective of people who are passionate about healing and sexual liberation in 2012.  Through her practice Dreaming Desires Asha help’s queer, trans, people of color heal from trauma, create relationships, name their desires, build queer family and manifest their personal vision of sexual liberation into the world. https://www.dreamingdesires.com/

SOREN LIT 2022- Ilina Singh and Asha Leong (Mother & Daughter)

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SOREN LIT Editor: Melodie J Rodgers, MFA

SOREN LIT 2022- Glenis Redmond

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SOREN LIT Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

Glenis Redmond is a performance poet, a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, and a Cave Canem alumni. In October of this year, Glenis was selected to be the City of Greenville’s first poet laureate. She has authored six books of poetry: Backbone (Underground Epics,2000), Under the Sun (Main Street Rag, 2002), and What My Hand Say (Press 53, 2016), Listening Skin (Four Way Books), Three Harriets & Others (Finishing Line Press), and Praise Songs for Dave the Potter, Art by Jonathan Green, and Poetry by Glenis Redmond (University of Georgia Press). She is presently working on a seventh collection, Port Cities: Portals of the Second (Domestic) Middle Passage. In 2020 Glenis received the highest arts award in South Carolina, the Governor’s Award and in 2022 she was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors. Glenis was born on Shaw AFB in Sumter, South Carolina. She presently resides in Greenville, South Carolina. She was the founder of the Greenville Poetry Slam in the early 90’s. She confesses she is Bi-Carolinian as she lived in Asheville, North Carolina for seventeen years and was a vital leader in the poetry scene in the 90’s. During that time, she was a Southern Fried Slam champion of the individuals twice and ranked twice in the top ten at the National Slam. Glenis was awarded the WNC Best Poet through the Mountain Xpress so many times, she was placed in the Hall of Fame. Glenis is a North Carolina Literary Fellowship recipient and helped to create the first Writer-in-Residence program at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina. She received her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College while touring full-time as a poet and mother-of-twins, Amber, and Celeste Sherer. She is now a Gaga to three grandchildren Julian, age 7 and Paisley age 1 and newborn, Quinn. Glenis has spent almost three decades touring the country as a poet and teaching artist. She served as the Poet-in-Resident for the Peace Center in Greenville and the State Theatre in New Brunswick, NJ. As a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, for seventeen years, Glenis has created and facilitated poetry workshops for school districts across the country. Since 2014, she has served as the mentor poet for the National Student Poets Program through Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. In the past she has prepared these exceptional youth poets to read at the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, and for First Lady Michelle Obama at The White House. Her poetry has been showcased on NPR and PBS and has been most recently published in Orion Magazine, storySouth and The New York Times, as well as numerous literary journals nationally and internationally. Glenis believes poetry is the mouth that speaks when all other mouths are silent. 

Website: www.glenisredmond.com

Instagram: glenismakingpoetryreign

Twitter: glenisredmond

TikTok: RedwomanGlenis

Dr. Dionne Bates-SOREN LIT 2022

SOREN LIT: www.sorenlit.com

D. Dionne Bates, PhD, LPC, CPCS is a licensed professional counselor in private

practice who holds a B.A. in Sociology (with emphasis in deviant behavior), an M.A. in

Counseling Psychology, and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. In clinical practice almost 20 years,

Dr. Bates has observed that the root of many individuals’ emotional and psychological distress is

their inability to integrate their “true” selves into various realms of their lives. The author of the

Self-SOULstice Model of Affirmation, Dr. Bates works with her clients to help them reach

optimal mental health by affirming self, affirming others, and living authentically.

From 2010-2015 Dr. Bates was an Educational Psychologist at Georgia Southern

University’s (GSU) Counseling Center where she had responsibility for the students’ mental

health needs as well as providing education and support to faculty and staff. She also served as

SAFE SPACE Coordinator and represented the Counseling Center on the university’s

Professional Development Council. Dr. Bates taught graduate studies, serving as adjunct

professor in GSU’s College of Education and Alabama A&M University’s Department of

Psychology and Counseling. The owner of Self-SOULstice, LLC in Marietta, Georgia, she

provides a range of psychotherapeutic, supervision, and consultative services, including serving

as Senior Mental Health Advisor for the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective

(BEAM). Dr. Bates has participated in discussions on human sexuality and sexual health with

first year Emory University medical students. Her research has included identity development,

LGBT issues, and a stage model of affirming self and others. Her writings have been featured in

the Atlanta Tribune, Blavity.com, Your Tango, Dailyworth and numerous in regional, national,

and international newspapers and academic journals.

SOREN LIT: www.sorenlit.com

SOREN LIT editor and producer: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

L. Marie Wood is an award-winning dark fiction author, screenwriter, and poet with novels in the psychological horror, mystery, and dark romance genres. She won the Golden Stake Award for her novel The Promise Keeper.  She is a MICO Award nominated screenwriter and has won Best Horror, Best Action, Best Afrofuturism/Horror/Sci-Fi, and Best Short Screenplay awards in both national and international film festivals. Wood’s short fiction has been published in groundbreaking works, including the Bram Stoker Award Finalist anthology, Sycorax's Daughters and Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire. Her academic writing has been published by Nightmare Magazine and the cross-curricular text, Conjuring Worlds: An Afrofuturist Textbook. She is the founder of the Speculative Fiction Academy, an English and Creative Writing professor, a horror scholar, and a frequent speaker in the genre convention space.                                                        Learn more about L. Marie Wood at www.lmariewood.com

SOREN LIT Podcast Producer and Founding Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers, MFA

Website: sorenlit.com

Email: [email protected]

Pauletta Hansel- SOREN LIT 2022

Pauletta Hansel’s books include Friend, Coal Town Photograph and Palindrome, winner of the 2017 Weatherford Award for Appalachian poetry; Heartbreak Tree is forthcoming from Madville Publishing. Her writing was featured in Oxford American, Verse Daily and Poetry Daily. Pauletta was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate and past managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. https://paulettahansel.wordpress.com/.

SOREN LIT Producer and Founding Editor: Melodie J. Rodgers

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Mary O’Brien Fall/Winter 2022

Mary O’Brien is an artist, writer and poet. Her writing evolves out of her engagement with place. and community, and the research she develops for land art installations. Her non-fiction works delve into ecological loss and community resilience. She writes about political landscapes and our anthropocentric relationships with them—the ways in which wars, capital, and infrastructure have molded lands and communities. O’Brien’s public art installations can be found across the US and are documented atwatershedsculpture.com . Her essays and poems have been published in Field to Palette , StanfordUniversity’s MAHB Journal ; The Solutions Journal ; Women’s Eco Artist Dialogue journal, Silver Birch Press, and Soren Lit.

SOREN LIT Founding Editor & Producer: Melodie J. Rodgers

www.sorenlit.com