Rose Gordon arrived to Arroyo Hondo in Taos in 1969 with her partner, Paul, and helped build Morningstar Commune. Her first child, Nova, was born that fall. They left in 1972 and, in a way that may be familiar to many of us, felt compelled to return to Taos. So she did, in 1978, and has been here ever since. Her son, Matthew was born here in 1980. Rose earned a special degree in Hospice and Grief Counseling from the Kubler Ross School of Death and Dying in El Rito, NM and her Bachelors from UNM. She feels fortunate to have had a variety of jobs in Taos. She’s been a restaurant manager, staff at the Fenix Gallery, a Deputy Investigator for the NM Office of the Medical Investigator, the Director of the Being with Dying Project at Upaya Zen Center and served for 14 years as the Restorative Justice facilitator for juveniles in Taos County. Rose teaches Restorative Justice to professionals and community people in New Mexico and facilitated retreats in N.Y. Boston, Colorado, New Mexico and Dubai. For the past five years she’s brought her decades of experience in death and dying to her work as the Spiritual Care provider and trainer of Hospice Volunteers at Mountain Home Health Hospice. Rose loves the land she lives on and shares with deer, rabbits, birds, coyotes and most recently a bobcat. She co-produced and did writing and research for the award-winning film, Bon-Mustang to Menri, volunteered with a hospice in India last winter and published “The Gatekeeper” -a short book based on the life of a Tibetan Bon Lama. Rose is currently working on a spiritual memoir. Magdalene Smith hails from a small town in Ohio, alias Flag City, USA. A town famous for flying more flags per capita than any place in the nation. Its only newspaper was The Republican Courier. Of course she fled as soon as she could, practically the minute she turned eighteen. The events that led her around the world with her gay-in-denial faith-healer husband (following your dreams can sometimes cause nightmares) are the subject of her tragic-comic memoir, Gospel of Desire. She has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College where she received two scholarships. Her memoir was the college’s nonfiction selection for the AWP Intro-Journal Awards. She is the recipient of a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, several Wurlitzer Foundation fellowships, University of New Mexico Taos Resident Writer's Award, and a Martin Foundation for the Creative Arts grant. She is the author of four books. Last, but not least, Magdalene is a former curator for the SOMOS Writers Series. Eileen Wiard is a spiritual director, writer, singer-songwriter who first came to Taos on a Helene Wurlitzer residency in 2002. She has found a home here in Taos and has written a novel for middle schoolers, Inside Outsiders, and a CD of her songs, called Yesterday's Rain.