Alumni Spotlight: Nita Sweeney

Nita Sweeney

Nita Sweeney attended the MFAW program in Port Townsend from 2006 to 2008. She is the award-winning wellness author of the running and mental health memoir, Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink and co-creator of the writing journal, You Should Be Writing: A Journal of Inspiration & Instruction to Keep Your Pen Moving.

While Nita always dreamed of being a writer, she didn’t know her own stories had merit. Nita took a path to writing that had stopovers in training dogs, playing the flute, and becoming a partner at a law firm. She was a follower and student of Natalie Goldberg’s, author of Writing Down the Bones, before she became Natalie’s assistant in Taos, New Mexico. At 49 years old, Nita took steps to becoming a marathon runner, chronicled in her memoir Depression Hates a Moving Target. “I thought the story was ‘middle-age woman takes up running,’’ Nita says, “but it was about ‘middle-age woman tries to save her life.’” Nita’s new book, Make Every Move a Meditation is available for pre-order now. In it, she will explore how movement and exercise can be a meditation, “Why not make walking your dog a meditation?”

To learn more about Nita visit: https://nitasweeney.com/

Buy the books: https://nitasweeney.com/the-books/

Join her communities:

Recommendations

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: https://nataliegoldberg.com/books/writing-down-the-bones/

Shinzen Young: https://www.shinzen.org/

NaNoWriMo: https://nanowrimo.org/

Couch to 5K: http://www.c25k.com/

Writers League of Texas: https://writersleague.org/

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