The Janavi Held Endowed Poetry and Art Grant was established in memory of artist, poet and yogini Janavi Held (1965-2018), to encourage and support women like Janavi, whose artistic, literary and poetic expressions are an integral part of who they are. The grant is specifically intended to facilitate further expression of women's creative spirits. 

Eligibility

The Janavi Held Endowed Poetry and Art Grant Board of Trustees invites applications from creative women (those who use she/her/ella pronouns) of all ages, backgrounds and ethnicities. We are especially interested in those whose artistic expression resonates with aspects of Janavi's own creative works and interests, including her view of the artistic journey as a means of personal healing and growth, of "living life in a more soulful manner," and, inevitably, of nourishing community. 

Amount

This privately endowed micro-grant of $1,108 is awarded as per the selection of the donor advised Board of Trustees.  If you are interested, please apply!  (Certain years, more than one recipient may be selected).

When

 We will be accepting applications for the year 2025 starting in January 2025, with a deadline of June 3, 2025. June third is Janavi's birthday. There are no application fees. The grants are announced in June, awarded as early as July 31, 2025 and no later than December 2025. 

Application Process

Please e-mail us the following: 
  • Your contact information 
  • A bio sketch (no more than 500 words)
  • An essay (2 page minimum) on why receiving this grant would be meaningful to you
  • Links to your website, blog, or online presence, if applicable 
  • A headshot 
We look forward to hearing from you! 
I see that I would be most comfortable putting myself in the same category as writers who see the artistic journey as a means of healing and personal evolution, of living life in a more soulful manner. A shift of one’s individual awareness, growth, and personal responsibly is often at the root of communal or global change." ~Janavi Held~
. . . The best kind of dying is that dying which gives new life to others. . ."  ~Janavi Held~
In the following excerpt from Janavi's 50-page thesis titled “Days on Earth: Creativity and a Journey of Reclamation”, submitted in 2009, toward the Bachelor of Arts degree she received from Goddard College., she speaks of her gratitude toward her uncle for the inheritance he left her, and the way it facilitated her creative life. May the grant established in Janavi's name now award the same gift of creative and artistic expression to other creative women around the world!

“Today I realize that the best kind of dying is that dying which gives new life to others. It is because of a small inheritance left to me by my uncle that I have been able to take the time to listen to my creative voice and redesign my life, to go back to school and educate myself about the nature of my talents, my abilities and even the limitations which make me unique. I could never have imagined when I stepped on this path where it would lead me, how far I would come and how much of myself I would uncover. This has been a journey of reclamation for a child so desperately lost and set aside in an educational system that does not address the needs of the individual, but only sets forth a system which is codified and convenient for the administrators to mass produce.  I will always be grateful to my uncle for the gift of this experience…”  

~Janavi Held~ 

2024 Grant Recipient


​Jennifer Nevergole

Jennifer Nevergole is a trauma-informed somatic psychotherapist, with a practice in Philadelphia, PA., who comes to the work from a background of dance, theatre, and yoga. She is interested both personally and professionally in the intersection and collaboration between creativity and healing.  

Jennifer completed the Body Soul Writing® Teacher Training Program in 2022 with Marlene Schiwy, which helped her begin a new wave of workshops that combine somatic exploration, movement, creative writing, and depth psychology. She is currently working on her first chapbook and a lyric essay about her grandmothers. A poem of hers is forthcoming in 2025 We’Moon Datebook. ​To find out more about Jennifer, visit her website: somaandthesoul.com
“My work incorporates the mother wound, the mother lineage, what it means to mother and birth, and how for some of us the big task in our lives is to mother ourselves into a new rebirth. Woven throughout is also a larger wound of being separated from mother lands. . . I am curious about women’s stories and the stories of what gets lost when we leave homelands.  If we exist in some form in our grandmother’s womb, what gets passed on through that cellular memory. What is held in our epigenetics that could help us heal and extend that healing forward and backward.” 
​"I am deeply honored to receive the Janavi Held Poetry and Art Grant this year.  To be seen and supported is such a profound gift for anyone, and to have that happen in honor of someone who was immersed in such embodied creative, healing, and soulful work adds to the beauty of it.  My deep gratitude for the grant and ultimately the opportunity to work on my writing and hopefully through that offer a space for others to be seen as well.""I am deeply honored to receive the Janavi Held Poetry and Art Grant this year.  To be seen and supported is such a profound gift for anyone, and to have that happen in honor of someone who was immersed in such embodied creative, healing, and soulful work adds to the beauty of it.  My deep gratitude for the grant and ultimately the opportunity to work on my writing and hopefully through that offer a space for others to be seen as well."

2023 Grant Recipients

Sara Nesson 

As a playwright and performer, Sara has appeared in collaborative theater productions such as On the Seventh Day with A Traveling Jewish Theatre and Sides of a Wall: A German-Jewish Story, an Interfaith America grant recipient. Since 2021, she has toured a solo monologue, The Broken Mishkan, to communities around the country, using her live, online performances as a catalyst for conversations about disability, art, and healing. 

Sara has received recent grants from the Alliance for Jewish Theatre and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for her work building visibility and equity for artists living with disability or chronic illness. She is a graduate of Harvard College, the American Academy for Dramatic Arts, and the Graduate Theological Union. 

When Sara acquired a disability at mid-life and was forced to stop working, she faced the possibility that she might never hike, bike, and swim again and that her career weaving performing arts, education, and religious leadership might be over. This rupture in her life, however, led her to explore visual art for the first time, to return to creative writing, and ultimately, to travel home to one of her most sacred places—the theater. Sara has come to realize that no matter what happens to the body, the soul can, and must, journey on. Her current project, Body of Water—a blend of memoir, Jewish wisdom, and fairy tale—will explore the plight of the author, a distance swimmer who can no longer swim due to chronic illness, in parallel with an earth in crisis due to climate change. Find out more about Sara on her website. 
 “I view storytelling as an interactive process that builds empathy, connection, and community. My performances will be followed by conversations that invite participants to share their own feelings about body, earth, upheaval, and resilience. Together we will consider the essential task before us: to value every resource on the planet as we value the dignity and beauty of every person.” 
 ~Sara Nesson~ ​

Caroline Mellor 


​Caroline Mellor lives close to the green hills and the sea in East Sussex, U.K., in an old farm cottage with a rewilded garden. There, she is a freelance writer, editor, stay-at-home mum, qualified holistic therapist, volunteer forest school assistant and founder member of Wellbeing at Brighton Earthship, where she coordinates and facilitates holistic events, retreats and workshops. 

 Caroline’s first book of poetry, The Honey in the Bones, published by Golden Dragonfly Press in December 2022, has received glowing reviews. Her writing has featured in Braided Way, The Green Parent, Women’s Spiritual Poetry, Rebelle Society, Scary Mommy, Elephant Journal, Hello Poetry, Scribe, Scuzzbucket, The Lark, P.S. I Love You and other publications.
​
 Caroline writes to deepen and explore her relationship with the world around her, in particular the richly storied landscape of the East Sussex Weald, where she lives with her husband and two children. Presently, she is working on a second poetry collection, and a work of non-fiction based on themes of intergenerational healing in a fragmented world. Learn more about Caroline on her website. 
“I am honored and beyond delighted to receive the Janavi Held Endowed Poetry and Art Grant 2023. Being awarded the grant is a lasting symbol of my commitment to living a creative life, which is synonymous with my own healing and which, in turn, I have come to understand as being interwoven with the healing at the collective heart of all things. The award is received with heartfelt gratitude to the Board of Trustees, and with the deepest of respect and gratitude to Janavi Held herself, whose work I greatly admire.”   
~Caroline Mellor~ ​

2022 Grant Recipient

Michelle Marie Robles Wallace 

​Michelle Marie Robles Wallace is a published writer, poet, multimedia artist and mother living in San Francisco., California. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, and is an alum of The Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and Voices of Our Nation. Michelle has reported from the SF Bay Area, Mexico and Costa Rica and published in Alpinist, Vice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Narratively, Catapult, among others.
 
Of mixed heritage, Michelle is preoccupied with borders--the physical, geographical ones and the intangible, internal ones--and ways to heal and supersede them. Her work-in-progress, Journey Home, is a collection of short stories that blend Aztec and Catholic mythology, family lore and current events, and engages with the borderlands. These stories ask the question: What makes home? ‘The Heart of Aztlán’, an installation piece, is a visual extension of this collection and was on display at SOMArts Gallery Oct-Nov 2014.

Michelle is also at work on a memoir about healing from Lyme Disease and a collection of paintings organized around healing. Learn more about Michelle on her website. 
"When I began to surface from illness, art was my life raft, even if it was painfully difficult to make. . . Since then, I’ve studied writing, I’ve written and published a wide variety of work and have been writing poetry again . . .Writing flows again, and it has a new element to it, one that wasn’t present when I was younger, a gift from illness. There is a mystic quality to my work, and when I create, I am conscious that each piece has its own spirit and that my work is to bring that spirit to life. As I work, the spirit of the piece works on me. Creating is my spiritual practice."
Michelle Marie Robles Wallace

2021 Grant Recipients

Durdica Maderic

Durdica Maderic  is a 'Maga' (female magician), poet, spiritual warrior, sacred activist, mother, self-taught artist and trained Sekhem Reiki Master. In recent years, she has also been exploring her true voice by engaging and sharing her writings. She has been on a spiritual path for a few decades now including facing a long-term chronic condition. Durdica was born in Croatia but emigrated to UK in 1991, fleeing from her unfortunate family circumstances. Presently living with her partner and her daughter, Durdica seeks healing, hope and inspiration from trees whom she considers her soul friends, guardians and healers. Her deep hope is these living beings were revered and protected globally. She expresses her deep love and reverence for nature through her creative endeavors such as her poetry and visionary artwork, which she delights in sharing with others. As she approaches her fifties, she dreams of new life, an opportunity to live well surrounded by an abundant, sustainable and collaborative community. Durdica would love to grow her own food and share her gifts of resourcefulness with other like-minded souls in a splendor and delight of a simple yet deeply rewarding way of life. ​Learn more about Durdica on her website, or through Facebook.
“…I feel deeply honored and grateful for such humble gesture of love wrapped in a beautiful gift of a beautiful soul: Janavi Held…My wish is also to inspire, uplift and bring more women creatives on board, including community collaborative writing project where all women can participate as equals and freely revel in richness of their unique voices.” 
Durdica Maderic ​

Grace Gabriella Puskas

​Grace Gabriella Puskas is an author of 'A Message from Source,' a collection of 33 poems exploring our connection to the planet, after winning the Local Legend Spiritual Writing Competition in 2014. She is committed to a path of spirituality and self-mastery and has been inspired by poets like Rumi. Throughout her twenties, she studied in a range of holistic and spiritual therapies and has written for a number of MBS (Mind, body & spirit) magazines. She is a qualified & experienced Reiki Master teacher, Crystal therapist, Dream therapist, Shamanic practitioner, Reflexologist, Herbalist and Aromatherapist. Grace's second book, 'A Story of One,' was recently published by Golden Dragonfly Press in alignment with Winter Solstice (2020). This is mystic poetry with themes of soulmate love, community, spiritual & psychic gifts, and divine Source connection. Grace is also a self-taught astrologist and numerologist, and Mother Earth advocate. She spends a lot of time contributing to sustainable communities, farms, and eco-projects and believes in the power of conscious community action. As a Pisces, the 12th sign and “old souls” of the Zodiac, Grace embodies selfless unconditional love. Her intentions reflect in her writing! Learn more about Grace on her website, or through her social links: 

Camellia Stadts 

Camellia Stadts is an artistic spirit who loves expressing herself via diverse creative mediums from writing and poetry, to painting, knitting, crocheting, and embroidery. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Marygrove College in Detroit, where she grew up, which she obtained in her second half of life. Of Polish heritage, Camellia is the mother of two adult children, and delights in being a grandmother as well. Having a strong sense of Mother Nature’s sacredness, Camellia is also an advocate for the bees and protecting our natural habitats. Her poetry reflects her unflinching faith which she weaves through diverse themes, finding meaning and grace in everything from Mother Nature, to the ordinary, through struggles, dark nights, and into the light of the sacred. Camellia’s work has been published in three different anthologies, and online poetry journals. She has recently completed her first full length poetry manuscript, titled Poems Through the Seasons of My Life, and is currently working on publishing it.  

2020 Grant Recipients

Tammy Stone Takahashi


​Tammy Stone Takahashi is a Canadian writer and poet. Her short stories have appeared in journals and publications internationally, and she has been a featured writer and columnist for elephant journal and The Tattooed Buddha, writing about wellness, spirituality and the arts. Her poetry (also as Tammy T. Stone and Tammy Takahashi) has been widely published and anthologized, and her first poetry collection,  Formation: Along the Ganges and Back Again, was published in 2015, by Prolific Press. Her second collection, Little Poems for Big Seasons was released in 2016, and a third, Land, was published in 2018 by Golden Dragonfly Press. Most recently, she released 110 Days of Hope and Peace. a collection of 110 poems to offer solace during the Covid-19 pandemic. She has also served as co-editor on two anthologies of spiritual poetry by women writers, including Poetry as a Spiritual Practice: Illuminating the Awakened Woman (2017). Learn more about Tammy on her website, or her blog here, or reach her through the following links: 

​"I am incredibly honored to be one of the two first recipients of the The Janavi Held Endowed Poetry and Art Grant. Janavi’s own work was a constant source of inspiration in its deep commitment to exploring the body/soul connection and our relationship to the divine. This grant will help me tremendously and I continue with my own quest: to understand, through the medium of poetry and other forms of writing and artistic expression, the sacred and embodied nature of our existence, which at every moment reminds us that our desire to experience truth and unconditional love will always be rewarded. This grant will help me be able to share my art freely, and reach as many people as I can with words of peace and hope. Thank you!"
~Tammy Stone Takahashi~

Maureen Kwiat Meshenberg 

Maureen Kwiat Meshenberg is a prolific writer, poet and writing workshop facilitator.  Maureen’s passion for writing became her heart vision in 2010. Her poetry comes to her through life’s experiences and delving deep into her soul speak. She considers writing her lightwork. Maureen is a medicine woman of words. She started her Facebok page  Heart’s Calling –with more than 6,000 followers—in 2011. As a writing workshop facilitator, she brings participants to a place of inner release and creativity through the written word. Her unique use of prompts initiates transforming responses as participants find an opening to inner empowerment and enlightenment through writing. She recites her poetry at local venues and conducts writing workshops at different retreats and studios throughout the Chicago area. She has three adult children: Alexandra, Dylan and Jonah. She resides in Oak Park, Illinois and enjoys beautiful walks in her neighborhood with her beloved Shiba Inu, Tsuki. Maureen is author of Seasons of the Soul: Transitions and Shifts of Life and Our Surrendering Pause (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2020). To learn more about her work, please visit her website here.
"t is with deep gratitude and honor to be one of the first two recipients of the Janavi Held Endowed and Poetry Grant. My heart takes a deep bow to Catherine for opening a space for poetesses to share their words through Women's Spiritual Poetry. It was there that I was able to read so many beautiful poetesses words such as Janavi Held, who has left her imprint on this world and will continue to do so. This grant allows me to continue to share the words prolifically forming in my heart, to touch others deeply with my poetry. To continue the work as a Sacred Writing Workshop Facilitator, working with women to express their inner emotions through words. To continue to bring healing, love and compassion to the world through my writing and publishing my work. Thank you dearly from my heart."
Maureen Kwiat Meshenberg 
*All photography and artwork featured on this site was created by Janavi Held*