Art From Ashes

Catherine O'Neill Thorn is the founder and executive director of Art from Ashes, an award-winning Colorado nonprofit that provides transformational creative programs for struggling youth. O'Neill Thorn, a member of the National Association of Professional Women, Colorado Prevention Partners Coalition, and the Human Services Network of Colorado, has... been conducting poetry and spoken word workshops for youth and adults since 2003 when she developed the Phoenix Rising transformational writing process. She has conducted sessions at juvenile facilities since 2003, including residential and day treatment centers, probation departments, and schools. She established and ran weekly poetry sessions for three years for Columbine students after the fatal shootings in 1999. Participating students gave a public reading attended by international media, and in 2000, O'Neill Publishing produced Screams Aren't Enough, a compilation of Columbine student poetry, which won the Colorado Book Award. O'Neill Thorn also is a published poet, writer and journalist and was the proprietor of O'Neill Publishing for 12 years (Marketing, Graphic Design and Desktop Publishing). She was founding editor and publisher of Poiesis, a bimonthly calendar and newsletter of poetry events for the state of Colorado from 2003 to 1996. In 1994, O'Neill Thorn established the award-winning weekly poetry series Toads in the Garden, held at The Daily Grind Coffee House in Denver. In 1996, the Colorado Council on the Arts and the Columbine Poetry Society awarded O'Neill Thorn a grant to publish The Poiesis Poetry Guide for Colorado. O'Neill Thorn was on the founding committee to elect the first Poet Laureate for the state of Colorado since the death of Thomas Hornsby Ferril in 1988. She served as the Colorado Council on the Arts coordinator for TumbleWords, a series of literary events designed to encourage audiences for literature throughout the West, and was a poetry judge for both the 1994 Colorado Book Award and the 2007 Poetry Out Loud national ...Read More