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Biography of Wendy Brown-Báez
Wendy Brown-Báez, neé Wendy Luann Brown, was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in
1954 and moved to Santa Fe in 1973. It was here that she met Frank Moore, a paraplegic
who was experimenting with alternative lifestyles, theater, and the arts. Together they
created the Human Melting Theater Project in New York City. Eventually she
accompanied his family to Berkeley and she helped to direct a series of experimental
theater workshops, returning back to Santa Fe in 1976. In 1977, she married Calvin
Hedgecoke, a marriage that was short-lived. They briefly lived in Salem, Oregon before
returning to Santa Fe. She joined a communal group after the birth of her first son in
1978. The group, based on following the teachings of Jesus as interpreted through the
Bible and Apocrypha writings, managed shelters for the homeless, brought free meals
down to the parks, and visited people in prison. Brown-Báez was instrumental in
developing a program to assist homeless and run-away youth in Seattle, along with
Elizabeth Ellis and Gregory Nusbaum. During the years of the commune she traveled
extensively, usually by hitch-hiking. She spent time in Boulder, Colorado; Missoula,
Montana; Eugene, Oregon; Healdsburg, California; and Seattle, Washington, as well as
passed through almost every state in the United States. In 1986, she traveled to Belize
with a portion of the group where she stayed for 5 months, then to San Pablo Etla, a
small village outside of Oaxaca where she lived for 6 months. From there, the group
reconvened in Isleta del Moro, a small fishing village in Spain; camped in the Canary
Islands; and moved on to Israel via Greece. In Israel the group broke up but Brown-Báez
continued to maintain a residence in Haifa for 3 years. These experiences of selfless
service to others, encounters with the impoverished and disenfranchised, a search for
truth amidst a sense of betrayal, finding identity and purpose, a longing for peace while
surrounded by conflict, and experiencing the rich cultures where she participated as a
community member had a profound effect on her creativity, her spiritual development,
and especially her poetry.
In 1990 Brown-Báez returned to her hometown in the United States. During this time,
she took an extended university creative writing class and her passion for the written
word bloomed into the first poems that were on a level to be published. She married an
Israeli, Moshe Aharoni, in the hopes of creating a new family and life together. This
marriage didn’t last, and they parted as good friends while she was re-establishing her
home in Tucson. Because of the financial difficulty and emotional stress of raising both
boys as a single parent, her youngest moved to Minnesota to live with his father.
In Tucson she attended a writing workshop for women at the University of Arizona at
the same time she was exploring the ideas of the Feminine Divine and the work of
Marija Gimbutas, Riana Einsler, Mary Daly, and others. These concepts coalesced in her
first novel MoonSense, an epic account of a matri-focal tribe which lived 6000 years ago.
This manuscript was accepted twice by small feminist presses but they went out of
business before the book could be published.
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Brown-Báez reconnected with her oldest son’s father Michael Woehler and returned to
Santa Fe. At this time she began to develop friendships that would last a lifetime. By
participating in weekend retreats organized by Earthwalks for Health, she began to
explore alternative healing, indigenous spirituality and ceremony, and the creative
process as a source of transformation. In 2001, she met Marcia Starck, a medical
astrologer developing her creative side with a women’s poetry group. Marcia invited
her into the group and her focus changed predominantly to poetry, although finishing
her memoirs and two novels. The group decided to begin themed readings that were
performance based, with costumes and props, and named themselves Word Dancers.
This group also included Shama Beach, Dana Negev, and Lynne Lazelle. She also
became a regular at the writing group Write Action founded by Joan Logghe.
Brown-Báez’s partner, Michael Woehler, was diagnosed with bi-polar illness, became
increasingly unstable, and committed suicide in 2002. The impact of his death,
combined with the experience of attending the Taos Poetry Circus and participating in
an intensive workshop taught by Tanya Taylor using the monologue process, released
Brown-Baez from the role of care-giver to consider herself as a professional poet. She
began experimenting with new and unique ways to present poetry and was published in
several prestigious literary journals.
In 2003, Word Dancers self-published an anthology called Dancing Between Worlds and
performances in Albuquerque at the Peace and Justice Center and Page One
Bookstore, as well as at Tribes Coffeehouse, Borders Bookstore and Longevity Café in
Santa Fe were well-attended. Besides working with Word Dancers, Brown-Báez was
branching out to BarB, the local hip hop and slam poetry scene, as a featured poet, and
in 2004, self produced a poetry CD called Longing for Home. She began to look for other
poets and musicians to collaborate with as she traveled to promote the CD to Berkeley,
Albany, Northampton, Minneapolis, and at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City. In
2004, she created, directed and performed in a bilingual poetry performance of her own
work and other published poets called Jugar con fuego with Alejandro Báez and Victoria
Guzzardo in Santa Fe. During most of these years, she earned her income from
childcare, retails sales, waitressing, and as the assistant teacher of a preschool class at
the Early Childhood Development Center run by the Santa Fe Community College.
Brown-Báez married Alejandro Báez, a younger gay Mexican, in 2004, in order to
secure medical treatment for him. She added his last name to hers as a way to claim her
niche as a poet that transcends borders. When she lost her younger son by suicide in
2005, her life came to a crashing halt. She was no longer able to live alone and lived
with Báez for several months. His sudden return to Mexico soon drew her there as well
and in 2006, she helped him to found the art gallery Sol y Luna: Arte sin fronteras in
Puerto Vallarta. She lived in Mexico for 6 months, during which time she created a
bilingual poetry performance called Dia de los Muertos sponsored by the gallery. This
event was well received by neighbors, friends, and members of the Puerto Vallarta
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writer’s group. She continues to visit Puerto Vallarta and to present poetry at the
writer’s group meetings. Alejandro passed away from complications of AIDS in June
2009, leaving her a widow.
By Christmas of 2006, Brown-Báez had moved to Minneapolis to provide child care for
her grandsons and to take care of an increasing problem with arthritis due to a
childhood congenital bone defect. She developed writing workshops that used writing
as a therapeutic tool and founded “Writing Circles for Healing: words to light our way.”
In 2008 she received a McKnight Foundation grant through COMPAS Community Art
Program to teach a bilingual writing/performance workshop with at risk youth at El
Colegio Charter School which culminated in a public performance. She sought out
groups to write with and soon developed a network through Intermedia Arts,
Northography writing workshop website, the Mid-town Writer’s Group and Twin Cities
Woman Poets and Writers. She taught her women’s writing workshop Common
Threads, Unique Voices at the Madeline Island Women’s Week-end, Amazon Bookstore
Collective, the Women & Spirituality Conference at the University of Minnesota in
Mankato, and Celebrate Yourself women’s retreat. She co-facilitated a writing/yoga
workshop with Gaia Richards called Spiritual Tune Up and was a mentor in Intermedia
Art’s Wings program. She performed at local venues in Minneapolis such as the Casket
Arts Building, Columbia Grounds Café, Patrick’s Cabaret, Banfill-Locke Center for the
Arts, Northeast Community Lutheran Church, Stevens Square Center for the Arts, and
The Loft Literary Center, as well as returned to New Mexico and to Puerto Vallarta for
performances. Since 2004, she has performed 12 – 18 times a year with the exception of
the year 2005.
In 2009, Brown-Báez’s first full length collection of poems Ceremonies of the Spirit was
published by Plain View Press. The book debuted when she featured at the Green Mill
Jazz Club in Chicago. Also in 2009 she received another McKnight grant, this time a
writing workshop with the students of Face to Face Academy Charter school and clients
of SafeZone drop in center. She developed the project In the Shelter of Words as a
multimedia art installation centered on a CD recording of the student’s writings. She
continues to travel to perform her poetry and teach writing groups.
Wendy Brown-Báez’s work has appeared in Borderlands: a Texas Poetry Review, The
Chrysalis Reader, Central Avenue, EDGZ, The Litchfield Review, Out of Line, Sin
Fronteras, THE Magazine, Poesia, Blue Collar Review, Common Ground Review, americas
review, The Awakenings Review, Minnetonka Review, Mississippi Crow, Mizna, We’Moon
datebook 2009 and 2010, Wising Up Press, CRAM 4, Lilitamba, Flask and Pen, Moxie,
Banderas News, poetsagainstthewar.com, The Arts Paper, and Lunarosity.
Dancing Between Worlds was published by Earth Medicine Books 2003, Longing for
Home, poetry CD was produced in 2004, and Ceremonies of the Spirit was published by
Plain View Press in 2009.