Meet the 2022 Give Grief A Voice Artists & Writers

Lea K. Tawd

Lea is a mixed media artist, Reiki Master, creativity coach, and author of “Creativity Unstuck: a toolbox for making more art.”

Her artwork is an illustrative, mixed media exploration of the divine feminine. She uses Reiki energy healing to help connect with the Muse and to infuse her work with healing.

leakarts.com

Joy Cha

Joy Cha is a Los Angeles-based artist.

Jessica Johns

Jessica is a fine line pen and ink and watercolor artist. She has always been passionate about art and using it to bring joy to others.

As a former nurse and mother herself, she considers it an honor to work for the GGaV project.

jessicajohnsdesign.com

Dianna Fontes

Dianna's creative nature grew out of a childhood centered in making the most of what is available. Dianna creates in multiple mediums and loves to collaborate and make commissioned work out of what's left over.

Justin Jude Carroll

Justin is based in Portland, Oregon, and has a background in theater, music, and teaching. He has returned to visual arts as part of his recovery from a brain injury suffered in 2015. His work is now primarily abstract painting with acrylics.

justinjudecarroll.com

McKenna Marvin

McKenna creates traditional media paintings and illustrations using watercolor, gouache, and pencil from her studio in Portland. Her paintings consist of chromatic, dreamlike beings and seemingly angelic motifs drenched in sunset, twilight worlds.

She studied art in Tokyo, Japan where she received a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Tyler School of Art.

mckennamarvin.com

Vanessa Smith

Vanessa is an artist and graphic designer located in Corvallis, Oregon. While more traditional art techniques including painting and drawing have been prominent in most of her life, she ended up choosing a career in graphic design. She most enjoys creating artwork inspired by nostalgic emotion, bold colors, children's stories, and mythology.

Lisa Reit

Lisa is a writer living in Portland, Oregon. Amanda's story was the first one she helped tell for the Give Grief a Voice project.

She's received a fellowship to the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and attended the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in the Tahoma Literary Review.

Jasmine Pulido

Jasmine Pulido is a Filipina American writer-activist (essayist, playwright, poet) in Seattle, Washington. She contributes regularly to the South Seattle Emerald, writing articles reflecting deeply on race, racism, and marginalized communities.

She is currently writing a full-length play entitled, “The Master’s Tool” that weaves together the biological, social, and societal implications race has on BIPOC folks who choose to engage in racial equity efforts. She also intermittently writes in her blog, “Shameless Jas,” where she unapologetically discusses shame and explores all the topics we are too scared to talk about because of it.

Elisha Palmer

Elisha is the co-founder of the Knox Blocks Foundation which was started after her son, Knox Owen, passed away to SIDS at 3.5 months. The foundation provides Owlet Smart Socks to families in need.

She spends her time advocating for babies without a voice, bridging the gap between the parent loss world and non-loss world on her blog Spaces Between You, and spending time with three very busy earth children and husband.

After Elisha participated in the Give Grief a Voice project herself in 2020, she became a writer for the project.

April Arevalo

April is a poet, short story writer, and researcher based in Austin, Texas. She is passionate about telling hard stories about her Indigenous Latinx community, loss, heartbreak, and joy in the midst of a pandemic.

When she's not reading or writing you can find her in a dance class or walking her three-legged senior Pug, Puggy.

Meet the 2022 Give Grief A Voice Artists & Writers

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