Meet Shirin Subhani

Shirin works on building collective synergy and community around stories of courage, creativity and change, as well as creative approaches to parenting and growing children and youth with special needs, specifically, those on the autism spectrum.

Shirin’s work in community service for women and children with special needs gives her insight into opportunities for the creative growth of people in personally challenging situations. Her personal role as a mother to two young boys, one of whom has autism, gives her an empathetic perspective towards nurturing early creativity.

Through Flying Chickadee’s zine Courageous Creativity and book projects, she practices her own creativity through her love for editing and community building. She is passionate about the opportunities for change created in the bridges between different cultures, and is hopeful that this publishing and storytelling platform will encourage many to share their stories. Shirin has edited You Are Michelangelo...And You Are David! and Thrive! Falling in Love with Life, and has written and performed in Seattle's Yoni-ki-Baat.

Born in an Indian-Muslim family, then married into an Indian-Hindu one, and now a naturalized American, Shirin is passionate about relinquishing the boundaries of these identity labels and simply being one’s innate, loving self.

  Meet Shahana Dattagupta

Shahana uses storytelling, writing, music, theater, visual art and architecture as mediums of fostering healing, awakening and creativity - in individuals, groups and organizations. She speaks on Love, creativity, awakening and life transformation and has authored 4 books.

Shahana believes that Creativity - every soul's unique self-expression - is the inevitable outer manifestation of inner Love, and that its conscious practice can heal, empower and transform both in the personal and in the collective, leading to thriving lives. Through Flying Chickadee’s zine Courageous Creativity, Creativity Workshops and various speaking engagements, Shahana delights in guiding others past their fears toward opening their hearts and embodying their innate and limitless creative power. This effort births not only something new and valuable for the world in terms of projects, products and entrepreneurial ventures, but more importantly, also the inner lights and thriving lives of their creators.

Among Shahana’s published works are Chickadee and the Cat, You Are Michelangelo...And You Are David!, Thrive! Falling in Love with Life, Ten Avatars and an international-prize-winning essay, Touching a Single Life. She blogs at Reflections and Revelations. Her 5 years of work with the viral and socially transformative project Yoni-ki-Baat (Seattle) as director, story-coach, writer and performer inspired much agency. 

For Shahana 'home' has come to be associated with both India's vigorous monsoons and Seattle's incessant rain, both the lights of Diwali and the warmth of Thanksgiving, and both the Tricolor on August 15th and The Star Spangled Banner on July 4th. She still tears up inexplicably about the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. And she really does believe that love is always the answer.  

Click here to listen to an interview with Shahana on her book on Creativity, 'You Are Michelangelo...And You Are David!', featured on GOOD BOOKS RADIO, by Dr. John Cook!