...and so, the Wind was Born by Gina Duran
…and so, the Wind was Born, is a book about love, friendship, community, and the desire to heal. It is about the way we struggle and fall during the healing process and how the power of the love of one person can become the power of community and the desire to lift each other during and after trauma and hardship. (Poetry)
As an artist, poet, and educator with a focus on marginalized youth. Gina Duran is the founder and a teaching artist for the IE Hope Collective; an outreach that helps people living on the streets and in shelters, and provides poetry, art, and yoga workshops for low-income, homeless, foster, refugee, and LGBTQ2S+ youth. She was the Guest Editor of Boundless 2022, of The Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival and is currently the Host for The Collective on KQBH. Duran teaches yoga, mindfulness, poetry and art workshops for EOPS, NextUp, CalWorks, the CARE Program, and Foster Youth at Chaffey College, and has taught workshops at the University of Redlands, Pitzer College, Ontario TAY Center, Joshua Home: an LGBTQ Youth Safe Haven, and the Pomona School District. Works from her debut collection of poetry “…and so, the Wind was Born,” published by FlowerSong Press (2021) can be found in the Her Story Mixed Tape Collection at the Autry Museum of the American West, in LA and Life in Quarantine project, at Stanford University. Her research Sexual Violence and the Assimilation Response of LGBTQ2 Female Identified Latina and Indigenous Americans, published by the University of Illinois Urbana-Chanpaign (2018) informs her art, poetry, and efforts for marginalized youth. When she's not making art and building community, Duran is a first semester MFA Grad student at Antioch University (in LA) while she works as a Substitute teacher, Yoga Instructor, Massage Therapist, and youth program director. She feels art and community can and will lead to positive change.