CULTURE OF CARE SERIES

Dmitra Gideon (they/she/he) is a writer, educator, and a founding member of Pittsburgh Family Liberation, a collective focused on mutual aid, advocacy, and community care for youth and families targeted by carceral systems. They are the Director of Youth-Centered Programming and Community Collaboration with Write Pittsburgh. In addition to frolicking around behind the scenes at Write Pittsburgh, Dmitra facilitates workshops at Passages to Recovery and the Allegheny County Jail, and assists the Teen Council. Their writing has appeared in PANK Magazine, SFWP Quarterly, Trace Fossils Review, and new {words} press, among others.

Shanda Harris is a woman of color with 4 children that she raised in a low-to-moderate income community. Shanda is a concerned parent who has dealt with - and still deals with - being a mother of an incarcerated/formerly incarcerated child. She now advocates for all -- especially our youth/young adults that face mental health issues, gun violence, drug addiction and abandonment on a day to day basis -- which has led her to a journey in entrepreneurship. Shanda has started several businesses over twenty plus years. She's now a proud owner of Shirl The Pearls’ bar, restaurant, and hotel establishment. After much time spent running her operation, she decided to focus on new ideas, and became the Founder/President of a non-profit organization called Team G.R.O.W (Great Resources of Wisdom) 6 years ago, operating in the Hill District Community. Shanda has devoted herself to connecting with families in the community through an outreach of love, education, togetherness, and trust. Being a mother and seeing other mothers go through some, if not all, of the struggles she went through and still faces today, makes her work hard to reach families through Team G.R.O.W’s programming opportunities, which show others how to gain and keep skills that will help build self-esteem and self-sufficiency that will benefit them for a lifetime.

Terri Minor-Spencer is the Founder and President of West End P.O.W.E.R., a nonprofit organization committed to strengthening communities through activism, advocacy, education, equity, and promoting unity. Terri is a tireless advocate for her community, working closely with returning citizens to reform the Criminal Justice System, participating in job readiness programs, serving as a G.E.D. Instructor, and being an advocate for entrepreneurs. As a respected servant of the community Terri and her service to others have been prominently featured in Public Source, 90.5 WESA, NOBLE Magazine—the National Magazine of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Officers—and numerous other publications. In 2019 she was awarded the Pittsburgh Courier Women of Excellence Award and was a finalist for the Jefferson Awards, and in 2014 received a proclamation from the City of Pittsburgh declaring October 7th Terri Minor-Spencer Day for her Advocacy and Community Outreach Volunteerism. She is a graduate of the Emerge America Cohort and board member of the Abolitionist Law Center, among many other boards and committees that address gun violence, youth empowerment, and community advancement.

Sarah Shotland co-founded Words Without Walls, which brought creative writing programs to jails, prisons, and drug treatment facilities from 2009-2022. As program director, she facilitated writing groups with thousands of incarcerated artists and mentored over fifty teaching artists working with the program. She is the author of the novel Junkette (WG Press, 2014), and the participatory nonfiction publication Abolition is Everything (Antenna Press, 2021). Sarah’s work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and has been published in Ploughshares, Creative Nonfiction, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She is Assistant Professor of English at Carlow University, where she also serves as Program Director of Madwomen in the Attic.