BIOGRAPHY--SHARON LIA ROBINSON (SHARON BAS HANNAH) Sharon Lia Robinson is an experimental artist, writer, and pathfinder. Her work explores connections between creative expression, inner healing, and renewal. She has been writing poetry, plays, essays, and fiction since the early 1970's, often seeking to heal the inner landscape of her life, overcoming many challenging psychological circumstances related to family, trauma, and society. In the 1970's, Sharon wrote for Sister!, a Los Angeles feminist newspaper. She joined a fat women's problem solving group at the Venice, California Women's Center which was run by the Fat Underground, and then helped put together and co-edited early drafts of the ground-breaking anthology Shadow on A Tightrope, writings by women on fat oppression which was eventually published by Aunt Lute Press in 1983. Several of her poems and essays are included in the book, and the title comes from a line in her poem, "whoever i am, i'm a fat woman" (she wrote under the name Sharon Bas Hannah at the time). Shadow on A Tightrope is now used in women's studies classes around the country. In 1978, having been accepted into the experimental theatre program at Goddard/Cambridge School for Social Change, Sharon moved to Somerville, Massachusetts. Sharon's graduate work focused on writing plays and poetry to empower full-figured women and to heal her own self-image. She studied Middle Eastern dance and began to perform and teach. About seven years later she completed her Master's Degree in theatre and creative dance. By that time, the program had been transferred to Vermont College, where her thesis--three plays and her notes on dance--has been archived in the Gary Library. Sharon has worked for many years in the area of dance and self-healing,with a special emphasis on the right of all people, of all sizes and shapes, togive ourselves permission to experience the joy of creative movement. She writes: "My writing often reflects the lives of people who are outcasts, living on the edge, the search to find acceptance, and our mystical journey toward wholeness and spiritual redemption. Finding my way, I hope also to inspire others to live their trught and to heal from trauma. Most recently, my poems have been published in Minotaur, exhibition, The Higher Source, Vigilance, and other journals related to the arts and healing. In 1995, I traveled to India on a spiritual pilgrimage to the tomb of Avator Meher Baba, and to meet with his close disciples. For many years, I have been working with a variety of photographers to document my life. From 1997 through 2002, I collaborated with Port Townsend, WA, photographer Steven R. Johnson on Rubenesque Landscape, with photography by Steven and poetry by me. We have shown this work in notebooks, at local galleries and art centers. Currently I am writing free-form nature poems and revising a collection of short stories (mostly about people outside the social mainstream). I have also written several collections of short stories and verse for young children, inspired by her work as a nanny."