2010 CONFERENCE PRESENTERS

FEATURED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

 

Break-out Speakers

Lucille Allegretti-Freeman is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice in Albany, NY. She combines her love of journaling and mindfulness practice for personal growth and transformation. She has facilitated journaling groups for women with trauma and addiction issues, using journaling as a tool for healing and wholeness. Journaling through breast cancer, she developed strategies and writing techniques that she now uses in the journaling and wellness groups she leads for those on the cancer journey.

Tim Blue is a high school English teacher who has spent the past 10 years teaching at various levels from middle school to college. Based on his belief that the English classroom can be a place of tremendous personal growth, Tim is constantly trying to help his English students grow as human beings while reading literature and writing papers. Tim recently earned a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Georgia State University, where he wrote his dissertation on a concept he calls "Mentor-Teaching.".

Susan Borkin is a licensed psychotherapist, coach and teacher of personal growth writing. She provides psychotherapy, coaching and training for people who are interested in using writing as part of their healing, growth or transformation. She also coaches and trains in the use of the personal journal. She works with stuck writers to address the emotional and psychological blocks encountered in the process of writing (i.e. Writer's block, fear, or trauma related to self-expression). Borkin is the author of Writing From the Inside Out: Using a Journal for Personal Growth & Transformation and When Your Heart Speaks, Take Good Notes: The Healing Power of Writing.

Angela Buttimer, MS, RYT, LPC and Dennis Buttimer, MEd, RYT, CEAP have been using writing as a therapeutic tool with clients for many years. Currently in their work at Cancer Wellness at Piedmont, a center for integrative healing for cancer patients, they use writing in various groups with cancer patients, survivors, and their loved ones. Angela facilitates Writing for Recovery, a program that specifically focuses on the transformative power of writing and sharing that writing with others in a sacred circle. Angela presented her work on Writing for Recovery in the 2008 conference. Angela and Dennis facilitate other groups and workshops at Cancer Wellness where writing is utilized including Mindfulness, Humor, Yoga, Chakras, and Support Groups. In addition, Angela and Dennis often use writing in private practice with both couples and individuals. Clients sometimes are not aware of how they feel and think about an issue until they have written about it. Frequently clients need to write before they can speak to help form, articulate, and clarify what is happening on the inside. The surprising insights that evolve from putting pen to paper consistently deepens the work a client is doing in session. Writing between sessions also assists in enhancing the work of therapy.

Carolyn Graham spent more than thirty years as a professional educator with specialties in counseling and management information systems. When the manifestations of chronic Lyme disease were causing catastrophic illness, she resigned from a cherished position at a community college. After suffering through eight traumatic years, she has regained robust wellness by using mind-body medicine techniques. As an expression of gratitude for her wellness, and as a commitment to fostering healing in others, she is writing and speaking about her inspiring story of recovery.

Dr. Elaine Handley is a professor of literature and writing at SUNY Empire State College. She is an award winning poet whose work is informed by the natural world. Currently she is currently completing an historical novel, Deep River, which is about the Underground Railroad. Elaine is particularly interested in the impact literature and writing has on helping individuals, especially military students returning from recent wars, heal from trauma.

Claudia Hill Duffee has thirty years of diversified experiences in writing, publishing, training, educational program development, and systems analysis. She first encountered writing for healing four years ago in her position as an educator with the University of Kentucky, College of Medicine. Here she led teams to design materials for medical residents on topics of sleep and fatigue management, inter-personal communication, professionalism, and bioethics. Claudia also attended the wellness writing workshop led by Leatha Kendrick sponsored by the medical center. Other writing workshops sponsored by The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Kentucky, allowed Claudia to continue to learn about writing and wellness. Recently, she has focused her research on Reflective Poetry and Spirituality in a graduate program in Spirituality, sponsored by Bellarmine University and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Claudia Hough is an instructor of writing and literature at SUNY Empire State College. One of her teaching and research interests centers on writing as a tool for exploring and defining our lived experience in order to promote wellness and healing. Claudia has co-developed and currently teaches a course geared to veterans who are returning to college. In this study, students can read what other people have written about war and give voice to their own stories.

Brian Jaudon is a master coach who combines intuition and systems thinking in his work with organizations and individual leaders. Brian has a gift for guiding the conversation deeper to uncover where a leader is stuck or hindered and how they can move forward with renewed purpose and enthusiasm. He draws on his training in emotional intelligence, family system, as well as his innovative Hidden Motivators model that explores the internal drivers of behavior and decision-making. Learn more about Brian's work at alchemyforleaders.com.

Leatha Kendrick teaches workshops in poetry, life writing and writing to heal at regional conferences and workshops as well as at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Kentucky. Her poems and essays appear in journals and anthologies. Author of three volumes of poems and a documentary script, she’s co-edited two anthologies and is currently completing a novel.

Laura Milner teaches Writing and Healing at Georgia Southern University where she is an associate professor in Writing and Linguistics. She has presented papers at two dozen national conferences and led writing workshops for people with HIV/AIDS, mothers of murder victims, and business/professional women in Savannah. Her doctoral dissertation and publications explore the benefits of writing grief, trauma, and illness.

Diana Raab is a two-time cancer survivor, memoirist, poet, essayist and author of 8 books. Her award-winning work has appeared in national publications. Her second memoir, Healing With Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey was released in June 2010 and has received stellar reviews. Her first memoir, Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal won the 2008 National Indie Excellence Award for Memoir and was also nominated for two other awards. She teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and in festivals and conferences nation-wide. She’s editor of Writers and Their Notebooks (2010), with a foreword by Phillip Lopate. Diana has been keeping a notebook since the age of ten, which has been her lifeline during difficult times and has also nurtured her passion for writing. www.dianaraab.com.

Jean Rowe, Certified Instructor – Journal to the Self®, is a Social Worker at NCI-Designated Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. Jean provides counseling and support to cancer survivors and their families. Jean facilitates Just Write, a journal writing group at Winship. Jean crafted and facilitates Healing the Healer, a 12 hour journaling workshop addressing compassion fatigue and burnout. Jean facilitates Journal to the Self® workshops in the community. Jean is working toward her Certified Journal Facilitator Certification through The Center for Journal Therapy.

Edward "Bud" Skillman As a 27 year old husband, father, and "change agent", Bud Skillman (Edward L.) went to a remote Hindu village in India with his civil engineering degree, subsequent seminary degree, and a graduate level certification in Rural Service Training from Cornell University, to render his services to change India. Instead, a decade in India changed Bud. Eventually, he taught at a private international school in the Himalayas. After many long treks through ancient sights, readings, and conversations with Holy Men, Bud began to understand the power of holistic searches for wellness. After a few decades back in the United States for more education and a couple of professional changes, Bud is in his 18th year teaching GED courses to incarcerated adults, most of whom are long time substance abusers with complications from inexorably painful childhoods. Bud re-connected with alternative wellness studies a few years ago and began using "wellness and writing techniques" he continues to learn from various sources to teach essay writing to these students. Dedicated to this work, Bud wants to share his template and challenges in this venue with conference attendees.

Joan w.n. Skillman After her more recent reaches into writing as a way toward wellness as differentiated from journaling and expressions often through pain drenched poetry, Joan w.n. Skillman discovered not only the restorative spiritual and emotional capabilities in wellness-writing connections, but also in simple changes such as how she writes her name to express her life journey. An outwardly happy and outgoing person, Joan has been involved 30 years in many community based non-profit organizations and issues as an executive, paid consultant, and volunteer. At age 20, a serious, progressive hearing loss first interfered with her status as a university debate student on scholarship and then, at age 25, worsened even more with her work in radio news and as an interview program host. Joan knows that her life still has been a fortunate one, but her studies with her husband, Bud Skillman, and her close friend, Claudia Duffee, in writing and wellness connections and practices has brought a new dimension to her way of teaching essay writing as a volunteer assistant to her husband for incarcerated GED students. Twice honored as Volunteer of the Year for her adult education work in the county school system, Joan is committed to sharing the wellness-writing connections to people interested in incarcerated adults.

Barbara Stahura is a long-time journal-keeper and freelance writer whose husband sustained a traumatic brain injury. She created a journaling workshop for people with brain injury, which evolved into After Brain Injury: Telling Your Story (Lash & Associates Publishing/Training, 2009), written with Susan B. Schuster. She is a certified instructor of Journal to the Self and is enrolled in the Certified Journal Facilitator program of the Center for Journal Therapy. Her Web site is www.barbarastahura.com.

Jennifer R. Thomas is a writer and recent graduate of the Women’s Studies doctoral program at Emory University. While pursuing her Masters in English at New York University, she taught College Writing and Business Writing at SUNY Purchase and Manhattan Colleges. Her publications appear in the African American National Biography and an edited volume about the writer, Maryse Condé. Jennifer’s current research examines how to use fictional mental illness narratives to address the crisis of mental health care disparities.

 

Student Panel

Danko Cooper is a poet majoring in creative writing at Georgia Southern University. His work reflects his experience as a dark-skinned African-American growing up in southeast Georgia and New York, where he witnessed gang violence and saw friends and family members die prematurely.

Stephen Rhodes is a senior majoring in creative writing with a minor in studio art at Georgia Southern University. Throughout his middle school and high school life, Stephen wanted to pursue drama, drawing and writing, but choose to be on the football team instead to gain acceptance from his peers. After high school, he went to Georgia Southern and finally began taking writing and art classes. His work reflects the pressure of fitting in a demanding society and the consequences that come with addiction.

Rachel Sohnen spent her childhood in upstate New York with her parents and younger brother. She began studying psychology at Georgia Southern University in 2008 and plans to minor in music and attend physician's assistant school. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, writing poetry and music, traveling, and she recently returned from summer study in Italy.

Michelle Vegliante is a senior public relations major and writing minor at Georgia Southern University. She spent her childhood in New Jersey and moved to Georgia for her high school and college years. Michelle describes herself as a wanderer who values nature, diversity, knowledge, and community service.

Elizabeth Vinson lived all over the United States because her father was in the U.S. Coast Guard. In 2003, she joined the Coast Guard and travelled to Alaska, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, South Korea and Japan. Since 2008 she has been studying writing and linguistics at Georgia Southern University. She lives in Savannah and enjoys reading, writing, cooking and playing roller derby.