This year’s Myth Makers panel features the novelist Jamie Figueroa and the poet Dr. Raïna Manuel-Paris. Jamie and Raïna will share selections from their work, as well as some reflections on myth, healing, and their creative process. We’ll make sure to leave time for audience discussion, so bring your questions for Jamie and Raïna!
About Jamie
Jamie Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and long-time resident of northern New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, Agni and Emergence Magazine among other journals. Jamie received her MFA in Creative Writing from The Institute of American Indian Arts where she is now an Assistant Professor. Recipient of the Truman Capote award, and the Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Arts award, she was also chosen as a Bread Loaf, Rona Jaffe Scholar, and is a VONA alum. Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer (Catapult) is her debut novel.
About Raïna
Raïna Manuel-Paris, Ph.D., born in Paris, France, of French and Caribbean descent, lived in England and then moved to the United States in her early twenties. Her love of transformational story telling has taken her from an MFA in Film from Columbia University to a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology. She is a published writer of non-fiction, poetry and several scholarly articles, as well as a documentary filmmaker. She recently completed her first novel, a mythical fairy tale, Arabella & the Wise Women. Her understanding of what gives meaning to daily life has led her to her work with dreams, and to include meditation practice in her classrooms. She is a lecturer and scholar who speaks on several subjects, including “Awakening the Magician Within,” “What Women Want,” “The Goddess,” “Love: Primal Agent of Change,” “Love and Sacred Medicine,” “War, Trauma and Spiritual Transformation,” and “The Major Arcanas of the Tarot as a Sacred Life Path.”