The Faces of WOW
We are exuberant, spiritual, playful, raucous, serious, centered, intense, brave, feral, explorers. We are creative, compassionate, introverts and extroverts, truth-seekers and truth-sayers, badasses with good taste. We're moody, needy, high-maintenance noise-makers; nature and animal lovers, tree-huggers, cooks, painters, gardeners, singer-songwriters, dancers, Reiki masters, body workers, therapists and world travelers. We are mothers, grandmothers, daughters, sons that used to be daughters, sisters, sexpots, crackpots and former addicts. We meditate, we write and we're not even all writers.
We're also so much more which is why we invite you to join us. You'll belong.
Dulcie Witman, MFA, LADC
Co-Founder and Creative Heartbeat
Witty, heartbreaking, and searingly true, Dulcie’s flair is as unique as she is. Trained as a therapist, Dulcie has been in private practice as a therapist in Maine for the past thirty years.
Dulcie started writing young; self-illustrated poems about snow monkeys and dead people. They came back to haunt her years later; she earned her MFA from Goddard College in Creative Writing.
Dulcie is a founding editor of Minerva Rising and has had work published in The Pitkin Review, Rawboned and elsewhere. She’s taught creative writing in Eindhoven, Netherlands with Watershed at their summer program, Camp Cushy. She completed a novel, Crooked Love, and is currently working on a professional memoir, Confessions of a Therapist. She believes sharing creative space gives power to the connections that fuel the creative process – giving life to something that wasn’t there before.
Nancy Coleman, PhD, RYT
Writing Facilitator & Yoga Teacher
Being in Nancy’s yoga class is not unlike listening to her read something she just wrote – feeling alive with the ocean, wind and hardscrabble earth, and, at the same time, what it is to be human, right here, right now. Nancy is a writer of songs, poetry, essays, creative nonfiction, and now with a full-length fiction manuscript, I See My Light Come Shining, in consideration for publication. She’s had work published in The Sun, Minerva Rising, and in the compilation, Maine Voices. Additionally, Nancy is the award-winning author of Wide Open Writing: Embrace Your Creative Genius.
Nancy has been a practicing psychotherapist for more than thirty years, earning her PhD from Columbia University. She’s studied mindfulness, body-mind integrative practices and EMDR. She’s fascinated by how new discoveries in the science of psychology weave together with ancient Eastern wisdom to inform our journeys to health. Her yoga practice of over twenty years led her to become a teacher of yoga. For Nancy, every word matters, and yet the word is not the path – nothing matters more than phosphorescence and prayer.
Pam Dumlao
Business & Logistics Wrangler
Pam’s creative self first whispered to her during a writing class in high school, emerging occasionally during her corporate life in the form of business proposals. Retirement – and the transformational WOW experience – has given Pam’s creative voice new volume, and she’s listening.
Travel has enabled Pam to hear creative voices from other places. Whether living on her own in Slovakia or heading out on safari in East Africa, Pam has asked fundamental questions to better understand the human experience – how does tradition, history and experience shape culture? What makes people happy? The answers have shaped Pam’s perspective in life and in writing. Now she wants to share the magic of travel, inspiration, and setting provided by WOW retreats with other writers.
Robin Gaines
Writer, Editor, Good Listener & Lover of New Vistas
Robin believes art is sustenance and making it, seeing it, hearing it fills her soul with all the beauty and terror of the human condition—her favorite thing to contemplate.
Her debut novel, Invincible Summers, was published by ELJ Editions in June 2016. Since its release, it has been awarded a Shelf Unbound 2018 Best Indie Notable 100 Book and Runner Up 2018 in General Fiction at the Florida Book Festival.
Before writing fiction, she worked as a freelance music journalist and interned as a research assistant at Rolling Stone magazine. In between interviewing every “hair” band making their way through Detroit, she waitressed, worked in a record store (coolest job ever), sliced deli meat (still can’t eat it), managed a box office, helped with tour publicity for The Rockets and Ted Nugent (don’t ask—it was a paycheck), covered local government for a newspaper, wrote book and concert reviews, and taught Pilates.
She has a Master of Arts in Journalism, and her short stories and essays have been published in various online and print journals. Her favorite place is on the lake in northern Michigan, or passport in hand, off to explore new horizons.
Nikki Kallio, MFA
Instructor, Writer & Creativity Sorceress
Nikki adores the conjuring process, watching the magic happen from just a few simple words or phrases, enchanted by the different ways stories manifest for each writer. Nikki’s love for writing led her first to a career as a journalist, taking her from Wisconsin to Maine then California and back. On weekends she worked on her novel manuscripts and her drive to focus on her creative life drew her to Goddard College, where she earned an MFA, focusing on post-apocalyptic fiction. Her short fiction collection, Finding the Bones, was published by Cornerstone Press in 2023, and includes the award-winning short story “Geography Lesson,” about a man trying to explain to his daughter what Earth was like. She is the fiction editor for the literary journal Minerva Rising and has led workshops for The Mill: A Place For Writers in Appleton, Wisconsin and the UntitledTown Book & Author Festival in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Her passion is constructing authentic worlds, whether they’re set in the backyard or outer space.
Emily Shearer
Poet, Essayist, Intuitive Naïf Visual Artist
“I can teach you how to bake the perfect brownies that will bring all the boys and girls to your yard. I can demonstrate Vasistasana and show you how to organize your bones and comment conjuguer les verbes irreguliers but walking you through the steps that will turn lead into gold, well, that’s where I leave you, young Skywalkers. My writing is like my art: I open the sketch book and pull out my paints and crank up the tunes and get out of my own way. All’s I know about writing is this: breathe with your heart wide open and your eyes wide shut and go dark and then reach toward the light. Then just transcribe that on paper.”
Hughes Kraft, MA, LCPC, LADC
Therapist, Naturalist, Connecter
A moment of truth led Hughes from the pursuing life of NYC to the connected life in Maine. In northern New England he has learned to build ice rinks, SUP board under a full moon, solo on islands by kayak, explore woods by bike and swim in the ocean. His effort in letting go is the effort he brings to his life, letting go so he can open to the larger story unfolding in his life and the world around him.
Hughes writes from moments of awareness; or from metaphor that speaks to him; using journaling to explore and understand. He is comforted that journaling is a way to keep him grounded and connected to his place in time.
Hughes has been in private practice as a therapist over 25 years. His current passion is working with men in the deliciously complicated midlife phase with its rich opportunities to open to a larger self. Hughes challenges men to look at the unhealthy side of their masculinity while finding a kinder way to be with ourselves. He runs a men’s group, has a yoga practice, coordinates a father son annual canoe trip, renovates old buildings and is a hack on the mandolin.
Dana Yeaton, Assoc. Professor of Theatre
Playwright, Lyricist, Director
Dana is a playwright, lyricist, and director who teaches writing and oratory at Middlebury College. He is the recipient of the Heideman Award from the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville and the “New Voice in American Theatre” award from the William Inge Theatre Festival. His full-length play Mad River Rising received the Moss Hart Award, and his first musical, Swing State, was a featured selection at the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Dana was founding director of Vermont Young Playwrights and recently founded Oratory Now, a center for training and research in oral expression at Middlebury College. In his spare time, he is trying to spare some time.
Ammi Midstokke, MBA, FNTP
Writer, adventurer, nutritional therapist
A popular columnist for The Spokesman-Review and Out There Outdoors of Spokane, Washington, Ammi grew up in the mountains of North Idaho, where spring trilliums and fall firewood left their mark on her soul. After over a decade of global adventures that often included the luxury of electricity and running water, she returned to her hometown of Sandpoint, Idaho.
From her basecamp in the Northwest, she travels and writes about everything from this awkward journey of human being to life-or-death battles with banana slugs. She lives with her husband, their two children, and a fluctuating animal-to-human ratio.
Vicki French-Sanches
Author, Comedian
Vicki’s creative writing includes stand-up comedy, sketch comedy, poetry, books, short stories, and social-issue essays. She has written two books, one fiction and one non-fiction, and is working on a third (fiction.) Her short story, The Pop-Up Family, was published in the anthology: Reflections, by the Ferguson Library. Vicki is a three-time finalist in NYC Midnight’s short story competition. Her op-ed on local hate crimes was published in the Danbury News-Times and reprinted in the Hartford Courant. She is the author of a digital marketing how-to blog, and her article on online personal branding was published in recruiter.com.
Vicki performs comedy at Comic Strip Live, The Ridgefield Playhouse, and Governor’s. It is her greatest joy to embarrass her three grown children, while charging them admission at the door.
Tanya Witman
Tanya is a holistic wellness coach, counselor, yoga instructor, and bodyworker. She lives in Tucson, Arizona with her dog Elvis and partner Rob. She is an avid lifelong learner and enjoys creative expression in many mediums, including singing, writing, movement, cooking, and crafting with whatever is available. She is the founder of The Grief Box, a self-care and ritual bereavement gift for those who are in mourning. Her interests span from philosophy to standup comedy to mixed martial arts to how to make the perfect mac and cheese and beyond.
She is deeply enthused to bring the gift of yoga and mindful movement to WOW retreat attendees to enrich their life-changing experience at the lighthouse.
Vanessa Dunleavy
Embodiment and expression are inextricably linked. A friendly relationship with your body and a fulfilling creative life are dependent upon each other. As it turns out, embodied expression is a lifelong journey. The practice of yoga helps make this journey possible, and can make it a joy. Being a human is hard! Having a body is harder. We all get stuck sometimes. The good news is, you already have everything you need to get unstuck. Vanessa’s goal is to help you access this.
Vanessa’s yoga training is extensive: 500-hour RYT (registered yoga teacher through Yoga Alliance); 200-hour from Yogaworks NYC; 300-hour under Chrissy Carter. She is a graduate of Anatomy for Yoga Teachers from Zenyasa Yoga & Wellness Studio, and a graduate of Pelvic Floor & Postpartum Yoga from Iyengar Yoga Center of Vermont, and has 10 years of teaching experience.
Franny French
Franny first won distinction (and a butterscotch sundae) in the third grade for a short story about a misunderstood scarecrow. Since then, her work has appeared in the St. Petersburg Review, The Ledge, Public Poetry, Enizagam, and other literary publications. She is the recipient of an Oregon Literary Fellowship, and her short story “Dead Fish” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has a forthcoming story in the online magazine, Literally Stories. She lives and writes and rewrites in Portland, Oregon.
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