Writing Now Reading Series
Ming Lauren Holden is an activist, actor, educator and writer who was raised on a zebra ranch on California’s central coast. Ming has worked in the international development sector on four continents in thirteen countries since 2001. She founded the Survival Girls, a self-sustaining theater group for Congolese refugee women in a Nairobi slum, a project that received support from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ming studied Literary Arts at Brown University; earned her MFA at Indiana University; and is currently pursuing a PhD in Theater and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she teaches undergraduates and incarcerated youth and researches how theater can help with rehabilitation and trauma recovery. Lidia Yuknavitch selected Ming's memoir as the winner of the inaugural Kore Press Memoir Award. Kore published Ming's book Refuge in 2018.