China Galland

Born and raised in Texas, China Galland, M.A., is the award-winning author of Love Cemetery, Unburying the Secret History of Slaves (HarperOne 2008). Her earlier book, Longing for Darkness, Tara and the Black Madonna was published in a new edition (Penguin 2007) along with the hardback of Love Cemetery to celebrate Galland's work. Her previous work, The Bond Between Women, a Journey to Fierce Compassion, was a finalist for the "Best Spiritual Book" award from Books for a Better Life. She is a recipient of a Hedgebrook Writers Invitational Residency, and has won awards for her fiction from the California Arts Council. She is presently working on a documentary film based on the controversy that Love Cemetery has stirred in Texas. She is also working on a new non-fiction book.

Galland is also a professor in residence at the Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education (CARE) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and one of the world's foremost authorities on the Black or Dark Madonnas. She teaches and lectures nationally and internationally on race, religion, the arts, the environment and reconciliation. Periodically she takes small groups on visionary pilgrimages around world. The non-profit extension of her work at CARE, the Keepers of Love, is part of the national Alliance for Truth and Racial Reconciliation at the William White Center of the University of Mississippi.

For years she has dedicated her life to social justice, asserting that “there is a point at which the spiritual and the political intersect.” She speaks up for those who are voiceless, responding to injustice with compassion and courage. “China is a role model of the power of one person to make a difference in the lives of many,” writes Gina Rose Halpern Director of The Chaplaincy Institute for Arts and Interfaith Ministries, who nominated Ms. Galland. “She embodies a spirit of understanding and the strength and courage of conscience that this award stands for, that reaches across the issues and beliefs that divide us.”

Visit the author online at www.chinagalland.com.