Tzavta #22

DEENA METZGER- Guest Speaker

DEENA METZGER is a radical thinker on behalf of the natural world and planetary survival, a teacher of writing and healing practices for 50 years and a writer and activist profoundly concerned with peacemaking, restoration and sanctuary for a beleaguered world. She has written eight works of fiction, five poetry collections, several plays and works of non-fiction. Her books examine the tragic failure of contemporary culture and provide guidance for personal, political, environmental and spiritual healing. Her novel La Negra y Blanca won the 2012 Oakland Pen Award and her Warrior Poster photograph is celebrated around the world as a testament to a woman’s triumph over breast cancer. Deena has also been actively engaged in integrating Indigenous wisdom and medicine practices into contemporary culture through her projects ReVisioning Medicine, the Literature of Restoration, Daré and the 19 Ways Training for the 5th World. Deena lives at the end of the road in Topanga, California.

DEVYANI SALTZMAN- Moderator

DEVYANI SALTZMAN is a Canadian writer, curator and journalist. She is the author of Shooting Water (Publishers Weekly, Library Journal starred reviews, 'A poignant memoir' The New York Times) and is the Director of Literary Arts at the Banff Centre as well as the Founding Curator, Literary Programming, at Luminato, North America's largest multi arts festival and Toronto's Festival of Arts and Creativity. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, National Post, The Atlantic and Tehelka, India's weekly of arts and investigative journalism. She sits on the advisory committee for Project Bookmark Canada and has been a juror for the National Magazine Awards, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and The Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. Saltzman has a degree in Human Sciences from Oxford University