Passionate about inspiring others
Ana Ramana has traveled a long way since growing up in Ireland. She earned an M.A. in Poetry Writing from Johns Hopkins University and began teaching Creative Writing at universities in Portland, Oregon. A severe accident in 2000 resulted in a profound near death experience during which she was shown that her life and teaching would radically change thereafter. During her recovery, she was assaulted by a barrage of memories from childhood which were so traumatic that they had been wholly suppressed from conscious memory.
With the guidance of her spiritual teacher, Ana left the world for seven years to dive inwards and to fully embrace the pain of those torturous years in a way she was incapable of when they actually happened. Eventually, she began to feel deep love for everyone involved, that same love she had experienced when she died. She saw how perpetrator and victim are both victims, how both feel powerless and act that out in different ways. She saw how there was no one to blame, how violence begets violence, how it is passed down from one generation to the next. And how it was given to her to end that cycle of abuse for her lineage.
Although Ana still spends time immersed in silence, she now feels clear that it is time for her to offer back to the world the gifts that she has been given. For the past few years, she has traveled by invitation to offer Spiritual Writing workshops; lectures on Poetry and Healing; talks about her spiritual journey; and readings of her Mystic Poetry. She has worked with serious writers, med students, the faculty at Florida State University Medical School, the terminally ill, the elderly, grade and high school students and anyone with an interest in deepening into love and their own being.
She has published three books of poetry and two novels. A documentary about her radical life’s transformation, “Her Heart was Full of Hummingbirds,” was released in 2017. It won Best Documentary at the Female Filmmakers Pasadena Festival in 2019. It was a selection at the Bozeman International Film Festival. Her semi-autobiographical novel, “Girl On Fire,” has reached #1 on Amazon. Ana’s poetry books, “Hymns to the Beloved,” “The Boy Who Would be Sage,” and “Duet with Humminbird” are also available on Amazon. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including The Academy of American Poets’ Award, The Heekin Foundation’s Fellowship for Literary Nonfiction, and the William Stafford Poetry Fellowship. Publishers Weekly named her an Emerging Writer to Watch. Her prose has been published in the New York Times and the Oregonian newspaper. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and journals worldwide, including The Mountain Path (India); Poets International, The Daily Now, Non Duality Magazine. She has been the featured poet on the Stillness Speaks website and is currently the featured poet on OneTheMagazine.com.
Writing Credits
M.A. The Writing Seminars, Johns Hopkins University
Academy of American Poets Award
William Stafford Poetry Fellowship
Heekin Foundation's Fellowship for Literary Nonfiction
Publications
The New York Times, The Oregonian, multiple poetry journals
Publishers Weekly: Featured as an Emerging Writer to Watch
“Girl on Fire” was #1 on Amazon upon its release
“Her Heart was Full of Hummingbirds,” a documentary about Ana’s life, won Best Documentary at the Female Filmmakers Fuse Festival in Pasadena, L.A., in 2019