Starr Goode
Starr Goode, MA, teaches writing and literature at Santa Monica College. An award winning writer, she has been profiled in the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The New Yorker. She was the producer and moderator for the cable TV series The Goddess in Art, the episodes of which are now housed in the permanent collection of the Getty Museum as well as available on YouTube. She lives in Santa Monica, California.
Starr is author of Sheela na Gig: The Dark Goddess of Sacred Power (forthcoming, Inner Traditions)., which explores the archetype of the sacred display. Explaining the role of the “hag” Sheela na gig in restoring the Divine Feminine, the author shows the Sheela to be an icon that makes visible the cycles of birth, death, and renewal all humans experience. The Sheela “a necessary antidote to centuries of suppression of the primal power of women, of nature, and of the imagination.”
Whether there are still-living Sheela na gigs today practicing their art in the countryside of Ireland, one cannot say, but the display of the stone Sheelas persists as does a faith in the healing powers of the image.
Starr will participate in the Friday evening authors panel for Foremothers of Women’s Spirituality: Elders and Visionaries.