About Sharon Bray
"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
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Sharon Bray is a writer and educator, best known for her innovative work in leading therapeutic writing groups for men and women with cancer and for teaching and mentoring helping professionals in the use of expressive writing for those who have suffered pain, loss or trauma.
Her first book, This Way to Canada, was written for children while she was a young mother living in Nova Scotia. Her most recent books, A Healing Journey: Writing Together Through Cancer (Amherst Writers Press, 2004) and When Words Heal: Writing Through Cancer (Frog Books, 2006) document Sharon's use of expressive writing with cancer patients. She has also written and published non-fiction, poetry, and memoir as well as a number of professional articles. Her 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, among others. Most recently, she was co-editor with Patricia Fobair, LCSW, of Learning to Live Again, an anthology of writing by cancer patients, published by the Stanford University School of Medicine (2007). She is currently at work on a novel.
Sharon teaches for the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and teaches CEU courses on writing and healing for helping professionals at Alliant International University and the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. She currently leads ongoing writing groups at Stanford, Scripps, and Moores UCSD Cancer Centers as well as a series of workshops for the Medical Humanities program at Stanford Medical School.
She was an adjunct faculty member in the Counseling Psychology Department at Santa Clara University from 1997 - 2003 and taught professional development courses on writing and healing through SCU's Center for Professional Development from 2004 -2006. Sharon was previously an executive in for-profit and non-profit sectors and counseled many executives and individuals during periods of change and transition.
Sharon's philosophy and approach to leading writing groups have been influenced by mentors such as Pat Schneider, founder of Amherst Writers and Artists, poet Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, founder of the Goddard College Transformative Language Arts Program, and the work of James W. Pennebaker, Ph.D., among others. A former Senior Partner of AWA, Sharon is featured on the DVD, Writing Alone and With Others, discussing her writing groups with cancer patients.
Sharon studied creative writing through the University of Washington Writers' Program, the Humber School for Writers in Toronto, and the Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College. She holds a doctorate in Applied Psychology from the University of Toronto and is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Transformative Language Arts Network, the National Association of Poetry Therapy,the Society for Arts in Healthcare. She is also a Senior Fellow of the American Leadership Forum, Silicon Valley. Sharon now makes her home in San Diego, CA.
Find Sharon on Red Room, "Where the Authors Are"...
See the complete list of Sharon's current classes and writing groups.
Read what participants say about Sharon's workshops.
Read an article by Sharon on writing as a way of healing.
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