Online Writer's Retreat
Sharon Nesbit-Davis
Sharon Nesbit-Davis is an author, artist, and storyteller. She began her arts career by joining the Jabberwocky Mime Troupe. Sharon worked as a solo mime artist performing for festivals, theaters, and schools. In 1996, she joined the staff of the Rockford Area Arts Council as a community arts coordinator and retired as the Executive Director in 2020. Her memoir, Intended-A marriage in Black and White, (a ten year writing project) was published in 2021 by 10/16 Press. Sharon conducts memoir writing and creative recharge retreats which include storytelling, writing and painting. Sharon and her husband, George, currently reside in Evanston, IL where she writes and teaches on-line, and George serves as the Director of the Baha’i House of Worship. They have two children, both award-winning writers, and eight grandchildren.
Masud Olufani
Masud Olufani is an Atlanta based multidisciplinary artist born in Los Angeles and raised in New York City, New Orleans, Miami, Dallas and Atlanta. He is a graduate of Morehouse College, and The Savannah College of Art and Design where he earned an M.F.A. in sculpture in 2013.
Masud has exhibited his work in group and solo shows nationally and internationally. He is the 2021-22’ inaugural Visual Arts Fellow at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. The artist has completed residencies at The Vermont Studio Center; The Hambidge Center for Arts and Sciences; and Creative Currents in Portobello, Panama. He is a 2017 Southern Arts Prize State Fellow; a recipient of a 2015 and 2018 Idea Capital Grant; a Southwest Airlines Art and Social Engagement grant; and a recipient of 2015-16’ MOCA GA Working Artist Project Grant. He is the creative director of Blocked: A Global Healing Project, an multimedia performance created to memorialize spaces marked by the trauma of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
As an actor, he had a recurring role on the BET series The Quad, and has appeared in numerous television shows including Greenleaf; Being Mary Jane, Devious Maids, Satisfaction, and Nashville. He is a featured actor in the film biopic All Eyez on Me. He was the co-host of the PBS news based investigative journalism show Retroreport, which aired nationally in 2019. He is the co-host of Undaunted, a new podcast series that centers the work of social change makers.
As a writer, Masud has published articles for Burnaway; Baha'i Teachings; and is a featured contributor for the Jacob Lawrence Struggle Series catalog, produced to coincide with a major exhibition of the Struggle Series paintings. His untitled memoir is currently in development.
Kim Douglas
Kim Douglas is the founder of Write to Unite, an online holistic book writing program, that supports leaders and change-makers to create a better world through writing the stories they were born to share—stories of endurance and resilience, transformation and empowerment.
Kim's deepest desire is to contribute to the healing and transformation of the world through creativity and writing. She believes the best ideas and the most valuable content for our writing exists right inside our lived-experiences—the present moment, our memories, our dreams, our yearnings to create a better world for ourselves and our children.
Traditional educational methods, cultural and family patterns and other forces have schooled us out of our creativity and silenced us. Throughout her 35-year career as an educator, writer and editor, Kim's ground-breaking practices and in-depth coaching and instruction have lit the imaginations and freed the voices of over 2,000 students and clients and have enabled them to write their stories of transformation and empowerment.
Kim Douglas is the author of High Desert: A Journey of Survival and Hope and co-author of Arising with Kevin Locke. Her current work in progress explores healing trauma and transforming ancestral and cultural patterns around invisibility and self-expression.