Women in the Arts
Through our Creator Spotlight series, we celebrate successful creative women and girls by sharing their inspiring stories. The series also helps debunk the myth that you can’t have a successful career as a creative.
Music has the power to heal. It can tell stories that reach an audience the way the words can’t. Tamika Love Jones is a firm believer in this theory. Jones is a singer/songwriter from Washington, D.C. Growing up, she could always sing. Yet, it wasn’t until her classmates and teachers encouraged her that Jones decided …
Scarlett Baily is a Mexican-American visual artist who draws inspiration from her hometown of El Paso, Texas. Her grandmother’s wild cactus-covered backyard is a place where she has always felt safe. The stars above Texas, the border landscape, and past exchanges with her family are the memories she incorporates into her work. For Baily, painting …
For Ella Mika, acting started as an evening family pastime. She and her family would take turns impersonating celebrities, influencers, and everyday people from their lives, with one member acting and others having to guess the impersonation. Mika’s father had acted professionally back in his native country, Armenia, before the family immigrated to the United …
Kelly Lan loved crafting, scrapbooking, and combining different art mediums as a child. A self-proclaimed visual storyteller, Lan now channels her creativity into both her work as a web designer and the founder of Hello Prosper, an arts education brand that crafts stories of Asian women pioneers who dared to be great. Lan was inspired …
In mainstream Hollywood, certain social topics are almost taboo. They struggle to receive feature film treatment. But writer and director Chyna Robinson’s No Ordinary Love is a powerful reminder that the movie industry shouldn’t shy away from tackling complex and significant subjects. Starring DeAna Davis, Lynn Andrews III, April Hartman, and Eric Hanson, No Ordinary …
Growing up, mixed-media artist Sheila “She” Keene noticed a lack of women leaders in her small town. She did not see female CEOs, politicians, or business owners. A young girl was expected to graduate from high school, marry and start a family or go to college to study nursing or teaching. Years later, this void …
Karen C.L. Anderson is a master-certified life coach and international bestselling author of several books, including Overcoming Creative Anxiety: Journal Prompts & Practices for Disarming Your Inner Critic & Allowing Creativity to Flow. Anderson corresponded with Girls That Create via email about her book, our Inner Critic and Inner Advocate, and how it all relates …
When it comes to luck, bestselling author Marie Benedict believes having a special someone who can pick out books you’ll cherish is a blessing. For her, that person was an aunt who also happened to be an English teacher and rebellious nun. When Benedict was a high schooler, her aunt gifted her Marion Zimmer Bradley’s …
Images, not words, are how artist Christine Anne Nightingale learned to express herself. Not only are her mother and uncle painters, so was her paternal grandmother. Born in Santiago, Chile, Nightingale moved with her family to the United States at age 14. Throughout high school, she continued pursuing an interest in painting. After marrying a …
Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, M.J. Fievre moved to the United States in 2002. Fievre’s publishing career began as a teenager in Haiti. At nineteen years-old, she signed her first book contract with Hachette-Deschamps, in Haiti, for the publication of a Young Adult book titled La Statuette Maléfique. Since then, Fievre has authored nine books in …