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Biography

Publications

Priestess Stephanie Rose Bird is the author of numerous published books including the award-winning and bestselling Sticks, Stones, Roots and Bones: Hoodoo, Mojo and Conjuring with Herbs; her #1 New Amazon Releases, The Healing Tree and African American Magick, The Healing Power of African American Spirituality, 365 Days of Hoodoo, Earth Mama's Spiritual Guide to Weight Loss, A Healing Grove, Light, Bright, and Damned Near White, The Big Book of Soul, and Four Seasons of Mojo. Her latest is Motherland Herbal: The Story of African Holistic Health from HarperOne. Many of these works are available as audiobooks, e-books, on Kindle, and in French.
Her writing has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, as well as journals including, "Llewellyn's Complete Book of North American Folk Magic: a Landscape of Magic, Mystery, and Tradition," "Virgo Witch," "Natural Home and Garden," "Herb Quarterly," "Sage Woman," "Llewellyn Herbal Almanac," "Llewellyn Magical Almanac," "The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore," "The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Folklore," "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number," and "Aromatherapy Today."



Professional Affiliations

She has been a member of the College Arts Association, Fulbright Foundation, Chicago Artist's Coalition, Woman Made Gallery Advisory Board, American Botanical Council's Herb Research Society, American Folklore Society, Society for Shamanic Practitioners, the International Center for Traditional Childbearing (Black Midwives and Healers), The Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetics Guild and the National Association of Holistic Aromatherapy, PenAmerica, as well as, the Authors Guild.



Visual Arts and Crafts

She graduated with honors from Temple University, Tyler School of Art and Architecture, and received an MFA from the University of California, San Diego, where she studied Visual Arts. Bird won a Senior Fulbright Scholar Award and through that award, she did fieldwork in anthropology and art in Australia with various groups of Australian Aboriginal people. She has studied Gullah culture in South Carolina as well. As an artist, she has exhibited nationally in museums, universities, and galleries. International exhibits include Tel Aviv, where she was included in International Young Art hosted, a Sotheby's auction, and in Cotonou, West Africa, where she showed "Banana God" through the Department of State's Arts-in-the-Embassies program. Her mixed media piece "Largess" was recently exhibited through the Arts-in-the-Embassies program at the US Embassy in Malaysia. She has won numerous grants, fellowships, and scholarships including a Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant, a San Diego Opportunity Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Faculty Enrichment Grant, and funding from the Australian-American Educational Foundation. She taught Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has held herbal workshops at the Chicago Botanic Gardens as well as Garfield Conservatory.  Bird conducts workshops across the country in medicinal herbalism, magickal herbalism, earth-based spirituality, aromatherapy, and the nexus of spirituality, art, and craft. She is developing new plant-themed art in her studio in oils and pastels.



Appearances

 

Priestess Bird has been an honored guest several times at Sacred Waters Retreat, in the Nashville, TN area, where she continues to present this year. This retreat provides healing and ritual space for 100 Black, Brown, and BIPOC women. She was recently a featured presenter at Mystic South in Atlanta, GA. Her upcoming conferences include ConVocation, in the Ann Arbor, MI area, among others for her Motherland Herbal book tour. She is also a regular presenter on numerous podcasts, which you can catch where you listen to podcasts. Bird is about to unveil a 6-month long apprenticeship called Earthwise Spirituality, during Black History Month of 2025. Stay tuned for more!