STACY RUSSO, PhD
CALIFORNIA WRITER, ARTISt, & LOVE ACTIVIST
Living My “Chocolate Before Noon” Life!
what’s happening lately!
I’m teaching English 278: Survey of Literature by Women in Fall 2026 (class runs August - December) and English 242: Survey of American Literature, 1865 to Present in Spring 2027 (class runs February - June) at Santa Ana College. Both classes are online and may be taken from anywhere. Reach out to me with any questions about the classes or how to enroll.
I’m currently working on two projects: a poetry collection and turning my PhD dissertation into a book. I’m also enrolled in Jennifer Leigh Selig’s fabulous “Writing Down the Soul” through Pacifica Graduate Institute.
One Day I Started a New Life, an art book featuring my collage and mixed media work from the past decade, is now available from Litwin Books.
I was honored to be a finalist for the 2025 Distinguished Faculty of the Year Award at Santa Ana College.
On November 22, 2024, I successfully defended my PhD dissertation Reading Women’s Lives: Autobiographical Writings on the Solo-Home Experience. My PhD is from the Transformative Studies Department at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. After much hard work, a dream came true.
Food Flowers Medicine: And Other Gifts from the Garden, a personal essay collection featuring work by contemporary authors was released June 2025 from my Wild Librarian Press. I co-edited this anthology with the fabulous Julie Artman. Julie and I also co-edited Wild Crone Wisdom: Poetry and Stories, an anthology from Wild Librarian Press that came out in 2024. Julie has been an amazing partner on these two beautiful projects!
My book BEYOND 70: The Lives of Creative Women won a 2024 Nautilus Silver Medal Book Award in the category of Aging Consciously! BEYOND 70 was also the #1 new Amazon release in “Individual Artists Essays” for several weeks after its release. Published by Nauset Press, BEYOND 70 features the inspiring stories of phenomenal women I interviewed between the ages of 70-98.
My book We Were Going to Change the World: Interviews with Women from the 1970s and 1980s Southern California Punk Rock Scene has been a text for different university classes in rock music history and women/gender studies. I’m happy to share that it was also adopted for high school level curriculum at Long Beach Unified School District in Long Beach, CA.
Thank you for stopping by today!
Women Gathering to Create Beauty (mixed media with acrylic/paper)
What does it mean to be a love activist?
Discover the Eight Beautiful Elements of Love Activism and practices for a joyful and kind life.
Scene from Poetry Hounds (mixed media with pen/watercolor/magazine paper)