Meet the Author
About this event
Meet three authors whose works are included in Ember and Vine Nonfiction: 17 Celebrated Essays of Courage, Heart, and Hope, a reflective examination of life’s most transformative moments. This nonfiction collection brings together award-winning writers as they reflect on pivotal moments that reshaped their lives. The thought-provoking essays span personal, cultural, and spiritual terrain, tracing how true transformation takes root and matures over time to shift one’s perspective.
Honest, vulnerable, and deeply human, each piece looks beyond the initial (sometimes traumatic) event to examine the lessons learned and the wisdom gained. By sharing their experiences, each author portrays how a single catalyst can grow into a deeper sense of identity, purpose, connection, and hope. Through an introspective lens of truth and courage, these writers invite readers to pause, to reflect on the turning points in their own stories, and to consider what is still growing and changing within them.
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Dana Shane Kennedy is a writer, lifelong adventurer, and creator of The Adventuresome Life. A former endurance athlete with a thirty-year career in marketing and storytelling, Dana has spent much of her life exploring what lies beyond the familiar, whether on a wilderness trail, in pursuit of an audacious goal, or within the uncharted territory of her own life. Her writing challenges conventional expectations and explores courage, vulnerability, self-discovery, and the transformative possibilities that emerge when we dare to embrace uncertainty and forge our own paths.
Her philosophy is simple: “ Fear less. Live more .” Julie Klein lives in Iowa with her husband and is the mother of four—two humans and two Yorkies.
Her essays have appeared in Wigleaf and the We See You, We Hear You Anthology . Her essay “Stuck in Lo-debar” was runner-up in the William Faulker—William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, and “Hand Me Down” was a finalist. Both are chapters in her forthcoming memoir, Juliebird .
She’s “The Boss” of American Dream Machines, a muscle car shop in Des Moines. Deborah Svec-Carstens, JD, MTS, is a writer, book coach, spiritual director, and former lawyer exploring healing after trauma, embodiment, and spirituality. Her debut memoir, Toward the Light: A Year in Paris , traces her search for meaning after a traumatic assault in Paris.
Her writing has appeared in Ember and Vine Nonfiction , bioStories , the Brevity blog, and the Des Moines Register . Her work has received recognition from Ember and Vine Press, Writer’s Digest , WOW! Women on Writing, and Memoir Magazine .
Deborah writes The Spiral Staircase on Substack and lives in West Des Moines with her husband.
Description from Beaverdale Books.
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