Short Bio

Laura Adrienne Brady is a writer, educator, and singer-songwriter (known as Wren). Laura’s poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Brevity, Poet Lore, EcoTheo Review, Cold Mountain Review, A Body You Talk To: An Anthology of Contemporary Disability, Seattle city buses, and elsewhere. Her most recent project, Pink Stone: Songs from Moose Lodge, is a folk album of original songs and an illustrated companion book of essays and photography. Supported by a 4Culture Art Projects Grant, the collection explores themes of illness, intimacy, and healing, set against the backdrop of Washington’s Methow Valley. Laura’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net, and she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University. Explore her music and writings at LauraAdrienneBrady.com.

Full Bio

Laura Adrienne Brady is a writer, musician, educator, and communications specialist with additional background in foreign languages, international relations, and design. Her life and career objective is to contribute to the evolution a more sustainable human society. In all areas of her work, Laura strives to increase access to healthy and life-enhancing lifestyles through connection to the natural world, the creation of strong communities, and the promotion of beauty and diverse ecologies. She is passionate about human relationships, teamwork and consensus-based leadership.

Laura's poems appear or are forthcoming in literary arts journals such as Reckoning Press, EcoTheo Review, Poetry on Buses, and Cold Mountain Review, her prose is featured in Brevity, The Rappahannock Review, and in the book Our Food, Our Right: Recipes for Food Justice, and her articles on sustainability have appeared in the magazine PCC Sound Consumer. She has released three albums of original music under her stage name, Wren, and one extended lyric book, The Pink Stone Companion Book. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net.

Laura graduated from the UW Jackson School of International Studies with high honors distinction for her ethnographic research-based thesis on Hugo Chavez's cooperative movement. She has lived, worked, and traveled in Spain, Venezuela, Quebec, and Guatemala and speaks Spanish and French. She worked as a language teacher for seven years.

In 2013, Laura helped resurrect the Social Justice Film Festival and served as Assistant Director there until 2019. In 2015, she stepped into the role of Marketing, Communications & Design lead at Rite of Passage Journeys. On the side, she has consulted with a range of organizations on a variety of tasks from web and graphic design to grant-writing.

Nature connection is central to Laura's personal and professional life. She holds a Permaculture Design Certificate and has worked on several organic farms. She has training in wilderness guiding, the way of Council, non-violent communication, and insight meditation. Laura expresses gratitude to the teachers and organizations who have expanded her soul-work, relationship, plant connection, writing, and healing skills: KT Thompson, Darcy Ottey, Michael Pilarski, Raina Imig, Jayson Gaddis (Relationship School), Rite of Passage Journeys, the Ojai Institute, the Seattle Insight Meditation Society, and the Seattle Institute of Qigong and Integrative Medicine.

Laura's interest in sustainable living includes community organization and management. She has lived in intentional, consensus-based communities for seven years, one of which she co-founded after being inspired by her research into Venezuelan cooperatives.

Most recently, Laura received her MFA in Creative Writing at Northern Arizona University, where she worked as a GTA Instructor in the Composition Department and co-coordinated the Cinder Skies Reading Series. She currently teaches writing at the University of Arizona and Coconino Community College.

About

Laura formed her arts and communication-consulting business entity Swimming Rabbit Arts in 2014, after several years of namelessness. That same year, she formed label Swimming Rabbit Records to support the production of her second album, Stitch an Ocean. The image of a swimming rabbit came to her in a dream, and she is still following the thread of that vision to this day.

Why Swimming Rabbit? Everyone thinks rabbits cannot swim. And many people tell artists every day that their ideas and dreams cannot float. So a rabbit that CAN swim is the inspiration for Laura’s work, which seeks to support creative visionaries, no matter how difficult to achieve their dreams may be. (And yes, there are actual rabbits that can swim, and swim very well: marsh rabbits).

Over the years, Swimming Rabbit Arts has offered Spanish lessons and translation in addition to writing and design for social justice and environmentally-focused non-profits and small businesses such as:

• The Social Justice Film Festival

• Rite of Passage Journeys

• Ongtupqa Hopi Music & Culture Project

• Gary Stroutsos - World Musician

• PCC Natural Markets

• The National Superintendent’s Roundtable

• Unemployment Law Project

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