Nomination Letter for the National League of American Pen Women

April 18, 2017

Carol Thayer Cox is a renowned art therapist whose talks, workshops, conferences, and writings reach across the nation and the world. Her specific interest is the link between creativity and mental health. Since 1981 she has given some 50 lectures, conference presentations, or graduate level courses for 25 colleges and universities in the USA, Canada, and China. Meanwhile she has published numerous articles in academic journals and has been interviewed by such papers as The Washington Post and The Huffington Post. She has co-edited several books making complex psychological issues accessible to the lay reader.

In 2013, Carol was invited to present the keynote address and a workshop for the University of Hong Kong, and a workshop in Kyoto, Japan. Her keynote addresses also include Hofstra University in Philadelphia and the University of Mississippi Medical School. Carol has recently returned from the March, 2017 Expressive Therapies Summit at UCLA, where she presented a workshop on creativity and the arts in healing. As an educator, Carol has served on the graduate art therapy faculty of George Washington University, Vermont College of Norwich University, and Pratt Institute's School of Art & Design. Since 1983, she has given over 40 national association conference papers and 50 community presentations.

Carol has been a friend and neighbor of mine for close to ten years. I have long been impressed not only by the depth of her own writings but also by her ability to collaborate with others to produce beautiful books that deal with the deepest and most wrenching issues of our lives.

Carol co-authored Telling Without Talking: Art as a Window into the World of Multiple Personality (W. W. Norton 1995). She co-edited Portrait of the Artist as Poet (Magnolia Street Publishers 2006). Carol's latest co-edited book is Saying Goodbye to Our Mothers for the Last Time (Lisa Hagan Books, 2016).  Having lost a paragon of a mother to a tragic accident, I can't think of a work that has brought more solace into my own life, nor one more deserving of a prominent place on the national scene.

I have long felt that Carol is an excellent fit for the Southwest Florida Branch of Pen Women. Typical of Carol's sensitivity is the poem she read at the end of her talk at the April luncheon: "Unexpressions," addressing the glimmers from the creative imagination: "What about the painting/that never got the brushes wet?”… “What happens to unspoken words?”… “What becomes of undanced dances?” What about those "cryptic reminders of creative sparks," that we feel as we produce our next work?

For all these reasons, it is my privilege and my pleasure to nominate Carol Thayer Cox for membership in the NLAPW Southwest Florida Branch.

Sara Williams (author), Secretary/Publicity Chair, SWFL Branch of Pen Women