About Sharon Sharon was my student for a semester at Goddard College, where she studied Transformative Language Arts. She is an astonishing writer, facilitator, and innovator in the field of TLA, and her business, Wellspring Writers, has great impact on all her students. Her excellent books on writing through illness are superb and used by many of my students as well as myself in facilitating workshops for people living with cancer and other serious illness. Sharon is a true visionary, a marvelously moving and insightful writer, and a mentor-facilitator.
--Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., Founder, Transformative Language Arts Program, Goddard College Dr. Bray was an excellent instructor and coach. Right from the start, [she] created a beautiful and safe environment in which complete stranges could share intimate stories of personal trauma ...stories never shared with anyone else.
--UCLA extension Writer's Program student
I'm not a lover of titles, but I describe myself as an author, teacher, therapeutic writing practitioner and writing coach. I love to write and have been doing it most of my life, whether professionally or personally, but I'm probably best known for my ongoing work in leading therapeutic writing groups for cancer patients, training helping professionals in the use of expressive writing for people suffering pain, loss or trauma.teaching and finally, teaching and coaching new and emerging writers
Years ago, when I was a young mother living in Nova Scotia, Canada, I co-wrote and published This Way to Canada, a children's book. I imagined I would write many more children's books, but life intervened, and it wasn't until I'd begun leading writing groups for cancer patients that my next book was written: A Healing Journey: Writing Together Through Breast Cancer in 2004(Amherst Writers Press) followed by When Words Heal: Writing Through Cancer in 2006 (Frog Books). Both, while different from one another, document my use of expressive writing with cancer patients, something I've been doing since 2001.
In addition to my books, I've also written and published a variety of creative non-fiction, including personal essays and memoir, as well as poetry and a number of professional articles. My work has appeared in Moxie Magazine, Looking Back: Stories of our Mothers and Fathers in Retrospect; The Santa Clara Weekly; Women's Forum; The San Jose Business Journal; Goddard College's Semester Magazine, The Transformative Language Arts Reader, Coping with Cancer Magazine, and The Storyteller & Listener Online, and most recently, The Art of Grandparenting. In 2007, I co-edited, together with Patricia Fobair, LCSW, an anthology of cancer patients writing (Learning to Live Again) which was published by the Stanford University School of Medicine and is given to new cancer patients at the hospital. You'll also find me on the DVD, Writing Alone and With Others, a teaching accompaniment to Pat Schneider's 2003 book by the same title. I'm now completing a novel.
Teaching is the other of my passions. I've been an instructor for the UCLA extension Writer's Program since 2006 and an adjunct faculty member at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley since 2002. I teach creative writing online for UCLA extension and at PSR, a therapeutic writing course for helping professionals. My writing groups for cancer patients are regularly offered at at Stanford Cancer Center in Palo Alto, CA and Scripps Green Cancer Center. I've also led groups for cancer patients at Moores UCSD andSharp Memorial Cancer Centers in San Diego. Since 2005, I've led a series called The Writers' Workshop at Stanford Medical School, a creative writing series for medical school students, faculty and alumni as part of the Stanford Medical Humanities program.
Prior to moving to San Diego, I was an adjunct faculty member in the Counseling Psychology Department at Santa Clara University from 1997 - 2003 and counseled many adults and students during periods of life transition, job loss and change before turning my full attention to writing and leading writing groups. I've also taught CEU courses on therapeutic writing through SCU's Center for Professional Developmentand at Alliant International Universsity in 2007.
Believe it or not, I use everything I've ever learned in the work I do now, whether writing or leading a writing group. My doctorate in Applied Psychology was earned from the University of Toronto while I was a single mother of two daughters. Later, I studied literary fiction and creative writing through University of Washington Writers' Program, Humber School for Writers in Toronto, and the Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College. I also trained with and was a former Senior Partner of Amherst Writers and Artists. My professional memberships include The Association of Writers & Writing Programs, National Association of Poetry Therapy, Transformative Language Arts Network, the Society for Arts in Healthcare, and the American Leadership Forum (Senior Fellow, Class XII).
I'm currently based in San Diego, CA, but only half my heart resides in California; the other half belongs to Canada.
Sharon Bray, Ed.D., copyright 2009, all rights reserved. This site best viewed on Internet Explorer v. 6 or higher
