Ahimsa Shakti,

is a literary artist and mother. Many landscapes live as home within her—from the rolling green hills of West Virginia to the drizzly-gray, mountain-kissed skies of Seattle, to the Red Rocks of Boulder, and the moss-strewn trees of the South (New Orleans in particular), to the blue-green lusciousness of The Big Island of Hawaii, where she was born. She currently resides in the gritty, urban landscape of Pittsburgh. And realizes that home is also in the people she loves and who love her in return.

Ahimsa was raised in a religious commune where she experienced childhood rape; sexual, physical and emotional abuse; neglect; and abandonment, as well as intense religious views about the inferiority of women and girls. She began writing around the age of 12, the age where we begin to define ourselves as individuals. Her writing is the echo of her journey to be herself without the legacy of the pain and violence she has endured. It is in writing that she both finds and creates herself. Writing is the place where she excavates her voice, and discovers the truth, power, and beauty of transcendence.

Ahimsa has lived an extraordinary life, but most of her days these days are quite ordinary. She is often doing the menial and unseen work of women—mothering two teenagers and a toddler and maintaining a house and home. She is learning to make time for writing, despite the never-ending to-do lists, mostly by waking up in the wee hours of the morning and learning to integrate writing into her everyday moments, such as when washing the dishes. And by accepting when she needs support.