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Maker, Mentor, Muse was founded in 2022 by Mary Volmer, Maw Shein Win, and Dawn Angelicca Barcelona. Hailing from three distinct cultural backgrounds, generations, and spiritual traditions, we believe community to be essential to building a satisfying and sustainable literary life, and that true success requires balancing all three roles: maker, mentor, muse. We are building a place where artists embrace practices that honor process, spiritual growth, collaboration, and community.  

We know that art can bridge the divisions, substantive and arbitrary, that divide us. We come together not only to practice and teach the arts, but to celebrate and learn from our differences and to foster lively and respectful interdisciplinary dialogues. We seek unity in diversity; wherever you are on your artistic and spiritual journeys, whoever you are, you are welcome here. 

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Our sponsor, Alta Mesa Center for the Arts is an interfaith arts and spirituality hub, housed and sponsored by Orinda Community Church.

Art is a Spiritual Act and Human Right
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Up Next at Maker, Mentor, Muse 

Words for Wellness: Self-Nurturing with Transformative Poetry
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led by Audrey T. Williams

Two sessions on Zoom: Saturday, June 20th - 4pm-6pm PDT & Sunday, June 28th - 4pm-6pm PDT
Zoom

You can attend one session or both! The price for each session is on a sliding scale: $35-$75. 


REGISTER HERE

“To discipline something, in the proper sense of the word, does not mean to repress it, but to train it – to encourage it to grow, and act, and be fruitful, whether it is a peach tree or a human mind.”
Ursula Le Guin
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"Talk Story" Consultations
​and Coaching 

Talk story: a method of helping writers discover and deepen their stories and overcome blocks. It's a simple, effective, and collaborative process that combines storytelling and deep listening and is useful at any time in the writing process. 

Developmental Coaching: For writers and poets who need personalized editorial support throughout the writing process. We help you conceptualize and clarify your artistic approach, identify your audience, and strengthen the dramatic structure of a story, be it long or short form, fiction or nonfiction. ​

A limited number of talk story and coaching sessions are available each month. Please contact makermentormuse(at)gmail(dot)com to inquire or to schedule a free consultation.

Facilitated Reading Groups for Writers and Artist

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A series of facilitated discussion courses for anyone who craves the chance to read diverse and compelling texts and then to converse deeply on the ideas, philosophies, and cultural assumptions inherent within. This is not a lecture course. Your instructors - long-time faculty members of the renowned Collegiate Seminar Program at Saint Mary's College of California - will facilitate honest, open, and respectful discussions on a wide array of topics and texts. Never mind consensus or resounding agreement. Our goal is to gain a greater, more expansive and generous understanding of history, of ourselves as human beings, and of the living and nonliving world of which we are part.  
This community welcomes people of all races, religions, genders, ethnicities, and economic circumstance.  And, yes, all genres! 


This community welcomes people of all races, religions, genders, ethnicities, and economic circumstance.  (And, yes, all genres!) ​