Tasjha Dixon

Jennifer Fields

Jennifer Fields is a Qualified Mental Health Professional (QMHP), aka classroom therapist, working with neurodivergent adolescents in Portland, Oregon. Jennifer's career has included 4th-12th grade teaching, school counseling, and she co-founded a school for underserved kids and a children's museum. Jennifer has been on boards for a nonprofit children's museum and a cooperative grocery. She has utilized therapeutic writing approaches with small groups of new mothers and also adolescents for decades, after being inspired by a workshop with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg in Lawrence, Kansas.

Rachel Gabriel

Rachel Gabriel, M.F.A., is a multi-disciplinary artist in word, image, and song. At the heart of her vocation is a belief in the transformative potential of creative expression to serve as a catalyst for sustainable change. As the founder and director of Your Word Tutor, she develops and facilitates literary programming and personalized writing lessons to engage citizens in the critical, yet joy-filled play of reading and writing. Her work is included in several anthologies and has been honored with awards from the Ragdale Foundation and The Loft Literary Center where she taught for many years. A passionate advocate for gender equity, religious tolerance, and peace building, she finds solace and inspiration in her garden. She lives with her family near the storied Mississippi River in the American Midwest. In her opinion, a perfect day includes making something by hand and dancing in the kitchen.

Kiesa Kay

Kiesa Kay, BSJ, MA, RYT-200, poet and playwright, created a 12 part video series, Transforming Trauma through Creative Self Expression, for Survivor Space, a division of Zero Abuse Project. Her plays have been performed in seven states. Her works include a memoir, Tornado Alley; two educational anthologies; a novel; and three books of poetry. In 2025, she was inducted into the Gardner-Edgerton High School Alumni Hall of Fame. Her website is Kiesa Kay | Writing Workshops

Dr. Juanita Kirton

Dr. Juanita Kirton is a Black, gay, African American, elder woman. Juanita earned an MFA from Goddard College and is the 2023 1st place winner of Oprelle Publication/Matter Anthology and is the recipient of the Wild Seeds retreat for writers of color for 2025. She is widely published; most recently in AVOW (American Veteran Association for Women Magazine), Sinister Wisdom, Mom Egg Review, Narrative, Persimmon Tree, Stillwater Review, Stone Canoe & Veterans Voices. 

Juanita is the author of 2-chapbooks, Inner Journey, Arseya Publishing, 2009 & Letters To My Father, Finishing Line Press, 2020. She is a trained trauma facilitator with Warrior Writers for military veterans & is a teaching artist with Crossing Point Arts (servicing sex-trafficked victims). Juanita is working on her first full length book of poems. She lives with her spouse in Pocono Mts. PA, and enjoys touring the US on her motorcycle, which keeps her sane. 

Andrea Leeb 

Andrea Leeb is a writer and survivor advocate from Venice Beach, California. She has an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars, and her work has been published in numerous literary journals including Litro Magazine, the Potomac Review, Text, Power and Telling Magazine, and HerStry. Previously, Andrea worked as an attorney and as a registered nurse. Her memoir, Such a Pretty Picture will be published by She Writes Press/distributed by Simon & Schuster on Oct. 14, 2025. https://andrealeebauthor.com

Julie Martin

Julie Martin has made her home in Saint Paul, Minnesota near the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. Her poems invite the reader to join her in discovering all that is hidden in plain sight. Widely published in literary journals, she frequently joins other poets in giving readings in Minnesota and beyond. She hosts Birds Nest, a monthly online open mic.

Bobbie Jo Morrell

Bobbie Jo Morrell lives in Colorado, has a Master’s degree in Counseling and is a Certified Spiritual Director. 

Her spiritual path has led through participating in and leading reflective writing workshops and contemplative practice groups, hiking and backpacking in the Rocky Mountains, including solo backpacking sections of the Colorado Trail. She is currently counseling and leading small groups and workshops in reflective writing while working to finish her memoir. https://shadowhorse.org/

Lynn Shattuck

Lynn Shattuck writes about topics like grief, relationships and mental health. She was a paid columnist at Elephant Journal for ten years.Lynn co-founded the website lossofalifetime.com, a hub of resources for those who’ve experienced sibling loss. She also co-edited the essay collection, The Loss of a Lifetime: Grieving Siblings Share Stories of Love, Loss and Hope, published in June of 2025. She lives in Maine with her family.

Greg Smith

Greg Smith. As someone whose life has been deeply touched by the Transformative Language Arts (TLA), Greg is honored to help further the TLA Network's mission. While he has always supported artists and creatives and appreciated how they enrich our lives; he has only recently begun to create with words himself. He completed a memoir as part of his legacy to his family and has begun a memoir about his wife Diane and their family's experience with Diane's vascular dementia. It was Diane's initial involvement with TLA that opened the door for Greg's participation, and for that he will remain forever grateful! Greg holds a BA in English and a Secondary Education Teaching Certification.

Scott Youmans

Scott Youmans, MA, TLA, is a past board member of the TLA Network and graduated from the TLA program at Goddard College. An Interfaith Minister, Scott offers spiritual companionship, facilitates workshops, and supplements these interests by offering technical expertise to values-based organizations. He is currently in the midst of his Clinical Pastoral Education studies at Naropa. Energeticspirit.life

TLA seeks to preserve the richness and diversity of language itself, and the intimacy of human-to-human contact in an increasingly technological age.

Transformative Language Arts (TLA) is a profoundly radical response to the fragmentation, isolation, violence, hopelessness, and despair of our culture. In the same way the word “radical” comes from the word “roots,” TLA brings people literally back to their roots, and from that perspective, gives them a wider view of what they and what their communities might be.

Transformative Language artists envision a merger of the language arts with individual and collective liberation: writing, storytelling, theatre, and music can work towards community-building, cultural and ecological restoration, and personal development.  

Vision of the TLA Network

The TLA Network exists to support and promote individuals and organizations that use the spoken, written, or sung word as a tool for personal and community transformation. As such, the Network is committed to providing spaces, both physical and electronic, where people interested in Transformative Language Arts can share resources, network, learn, and enhance their capacity to practice Transformative Language Arts as Right Livelihood in their communities.