Roots and Branches

put your creative ecosystem at the center of your life, where play connects with your unique power to build new worlds.

Roots + Branches

Posts

  • Finding your creative magic with intuitive writing

    Some quick thoughts on how to cultivate your own practice You’ve probably heard the term “intuitive writing.” But what does it mean? Depending who you ask, intuitive writing can be a stand-in for freewriting or stream-of-consciousness writing, or it can be writing that’s guided by your intuition. The latter is how I use the term,…

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  • Creativity moves like the breath

    On cultivating joy + rhythm Creativity makes us human. It’s big, powerful magic: It’s the magic that drives life-saving medicine and soul-soothing music. It’s the magic that guides me as I write my books and co-create my ferments with unseen communities that outnumber the people on this planet. Our joy is a catalyst for that…

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  • A journaling practice for when writing feels vulnerable

    Sometimes, it feels scary to share Sometimes, writing is vulnerable. It asks us to take something from deep within ourselves and, if we’re a writer who publishes our work, to put it out in public view. As an academic, I wrote on the defensive for many years: Anticipating people’s possible problems with my work, the…

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  • Becoming re-enchanted with your writing:

    It’s about allowing as much as doing We’ve all fallen in and out of love with our work: Sometimes multiple times over the course of a project. As a creative and human, I love love: the idea of it, the feeling of it, its transformational nature, its changing texture as it grows and evolves. But…

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  • How do I choose a topic?

    In food writing, it’s all about relationships I recently gave a talk on food writing at Forsyth County Public Library, where I was asked to share what food writing is, and how you pick a topic. As I prepared for the talk, I realized that for me, choosing a topic is not simply about picking…

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  • Hello friends! As some of you know, next month Symbiosis starts: it’s 9 months of creative expansion, grounding, energy work and intuition. It’s like a coaching program, MFA, artist’s residency, energy work space, science lab, and mystery school all rolled into one. Each month, we engage in expansion activities, grounding, practical nuts-and-bolts creative coaching, and…

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  • It’s wild out there. For those of you know who me personally or have followed my work closely for a while, you know it’s wild in my own world too: A time of transition for myself, alongside pretty much everyone else on the planet, alongside all our systems and structures we’re used to (for better…

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  • Digital collage, Julia Skinner, 2025 (scroll down for why I chose Mugwort) A decade or so ago, I used to write about things you learn in dreams. Inspired by Gary Burnett, one of my professors and dissertation committee members, who regularly wrote Facebook posts sharing the wild and wonderful lessons from his own dreamscape (and…

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