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Her Story Garden Studios
Inspiring Black Women & Girls to Self-Define, Heal, and Liberate Through Our Stories & Nature
About Her Story Garden Studios
Check out this article about Her Story Garden Studios Director, Dr. Zelda Lockhart
and the Healing through Writing Practices at Her Story Garden Studios
About Us
Our Community
Through these journaling and nature experiences, we write together, adventure together, and builds community,
Participants, volunteers and collaborators are all part of the magic that happens at Her Story Garden Studios.
When we say Black women, we mean all Black women, straight, queer, and from all cultural backgrounds.
We believe that when one of us is harmed, we are all harmed and when one of us is healed, we are all healed.
Non-Discrimination:
Her Story Garden Studios is an equal opportunity organization and will not allow discrimination based upon age, ethnicity, ancestry, gender, national origin, disability, race, size, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, or any other status prohibited by applicable law.
About Dr. Zelda Lockhart, Director
I was a little girl who wanted nothing more than to be outside playing in the dirt and filling my pockets with the magical things I discovered. Being told to be quiet and keep the family secrets was like someone telling water to stay behind a wall. Through stories I navigate and discover new paths for myself, and by reading and listening to your stories I am inspired to keep planting my truths and discovering what sorts of fruit they bear. I love to do all of this in our natural environment and encourage others to maintain a connection with nature for all the ways that it feeds, harbors and heals us. As a queer, Black woman, mother, grandmother, author, I am passionate about fostering freedom of expression and freedom in nature particularly for other Black women, LGBTQIA individuals and other BIPOC folks in the workshop spaces.
My research and facilitation focuses on utilizing the food, medicine, and kinship of writing and literature as ways for people to self-define, authenticate their relationships, heal across generations and connect as community. I do this work with individuals one-on-one, in workshops, in academic settings, and as a tool for community and organizational development.
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Dr. ZELDA LOCKHART holds a PhD in Expressive Art Therapies, an MA in Literature, and a certificate in writing, directing and editing from the NY Film Academy. Her work as an author and expressive arts consultant and educator centers on the power of story and nature to connect us across barriers and to heal our generations. She is winner of the Lambda Literary Foundation 2024 Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-career Novelist Prize. Her books include HarperCollins 2023 release Trinity (a novel) translated and released by HarperCollins France 2024 as Entends ma voix. Her other works include The Soul of the Full-Length Manuscript: Turning Life’s Wounds into the Gift of Literary Fiction, Memoir, or Poetry. Her other novels are Fifth Born which was a Barnes & Noble Discovery selection and a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award finalist, Cold Running Creek a Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Fiction award winner, and Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle a 2011 Lambda Literary Award finalist. Lockhart is Director at Her Story Garden Studios: Inspiring Black Women to Self-Define, Heal, and Liberate Through Our Stories & Nature. She is a dynamic speaker and educator who travels the US and abroad utilizing story and nature to inspire individuals to heal, maintain healthy relationships, lead effectively, and work productively and gracefully in community..