ABOUT
roxan McDonald

I'm Roxan McDonald. I grew up bouncing between an abandoned trailer park in Alaska and an apartment in Santa Cruz, California, back when it was filled with vampires and punk rock. Even though I hold a Bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Pacific University, I'm still a little bit feral, and I like it that way.

The craft of writing has always been an essential part of any healing practice I have witnessed from close by—mine and others. For fourteen years, while being an integral part of the management team in therapeutic schools, providing counseling to students and their families, I also taught creative writing. After that, I made the craft of writing into my full-time occupation.

My endless curiosity about people and their stories led me to coach others to write. While I have honed my skills as a teacher and coach, I believe that a major reason I have been able to help so many people find their voice on the page and in their lives is my innate desire for every person to have the space and support to become more fully themselves. I find it easy to align with individuals and get curious about their process of change and growth while staying hyper-focused and committed to the goals the person wants to reach and their style of creativity.

One of my first memories is of me, at four years old, staring into the eyes of a grizzly bear. I knew how to act around bears, make myself appear big, and back away slowly. But what I remember most about how I reacted to that bear was something I wasn’t taught. What arose in me was an uncompromised interest in others. I took in the way the sunlight illuminated the tips of every hair around the bear's small eyes and how his huge paws seemed to clutch the ground like gravity didn't exist for him and he'd be sucked to outer space if he didn't hold on. In the memory, the bear's heartbeat sings around us in a calming rhythm, and I'm less scared than I am in awe. The part of me that both respected the bear and honored how immense and dangerous it could be also knew that it was just a bear being a bear, I couldn't judge it for that; that is the part of me that I find most alive when I work with people. The love I bring for the artist in all of us is not just soft and welcoming; it honors how dangerous it can be to reach inside and dig up the messy parts of ourselves in order to create what we're being called to create. The part of me that utilizes my training, whether it be how to avoid a bear attack or how to lead someone to the throughline of their book, is the same part of me that refuses to let my curiosity end where my fear begins. When I become someone's ally in their creative journey, I listen to the heartbeat underneath what we talk about or what is on the page. I am proud to bring my wildness and my hard-earned skills to the work that I do.

My underlying question to everyone I meet is, "Who would you be if you were never tamed? How can we nurture that wildness that never truly left you?"

Here's more info about the awesome people I've learned from and the places I've gone to study writing, being human, and healing:

I have studied with Ellen Bass, Debra Gwartney, Chris Abani, Sanjiv Bhattacharya, Marcy Allencraig, Joseph Stroud, Barbara Bloom, Jessica Brown, and Andy Couturier. I am an alum of the Community of Writers, Breadloaf Sicily, and am a member of Cheryl Strayed's Esalen Writers Camp. I won the Mary Lonnberg Smith Award in poetry, and my short stories, memoir excerpts, and poetry have been published in The Porter Gulch Review. I have an essay published in The Journal of Radical Wonder. I won the Eshleman Scholarship for the Community of Writers.

I received an honorable mention in nonfiction for the San Miguel de Allende Writers' Conference for an excerpt from my upcoming memoir. I was longlisted in The 2021 First Pages Prize and is a finalist in the 2021 Sandra Carpenter Prize for Creative Nonfiction.

I am the author of the best-selling line of products published by Knock Knock Publishing, including the Spiritual AF Activity Book and Journal and the self-help in-a-box decks Spiritual AF and Grateful AF.

I have been an avid swing dancer since 1998. Even though I am not aligned with dancing as a competitive activity, I'm still pretty proud to have placed 3rd in the 2003 National Jitterbug Championship. I taught Zumba for many years and kept my certification for years after that so that I'd be prepared in case of an emergency. 😆 I have practiced meditation since 1990 and have taught meditation to people with trauma since 1999. I've studied with Francisco Kaiut in the Kaiut Yoga Teacher Training. I am a certified somatic bodywork practitioner in The Pantarei Approach.

I facilitate writing groups and personal development retreats online and at destination retreats in the United States, Mexico, and Europe. I co-teach The Pantarei of Writing with Vered Manasse (co-founder of The Pantarei Approach). I teach writing and meditation with Joseph Clements and co-teach with Ellen Bass at Esalen Institute and 1440 Multiversity.

I’m a long way from the trailer park in Alaska and the punk scene of my youth but no matter where I’ve gone I’ve found that everyone I’ve met has a wildness inside them and I am always honored when they share it with me.