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/

Sharon Sperry

Sharon is the founder of Better Nature of Work (BNoW), where she partners with people to co-create regenerative, responsible, and meaningful ways of working. With a background in recruitment, HR business partnering, professional development, and leadership mentoring, she brings systems thinking and a passion for fairness, beauty, and sustainable structures. A certified professional coach and Six Sigma Green Belt, Sharon is drawn to TLAN for its commitment to community, connection, and co-creation. She lives in North Lake Tahoe with her partner and is writing her first book about a burned-out dragon reclaiming her fire within. betternatureofwork.com 

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.

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.