Betsy Robinson

For over a decade she was an actor (Return of the Secaucus 7; Lianna; and assorted fools, clowns and sexy wenches all over Off-off Broadway). She is also a playwright, and her scripts have been produced at the Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference, Theatre in the Works (Amherst, MA), in Los Angeles, off-off Broadway, on cable TV, and in Iowa where she won first prize in the Dubuque Fine Arts 1-Act Contest.

A Bennington College and National Theater Institute graduate, she is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre where she's had many workshop productions and performed her one-woman 1-act, Darleen Dances (excerpt published in Moving Parts, Viking Penguin 1992, complete play published in Girl Stories & Game Plays).

Other published fiction: "The Shanglers," New Plays by Women; “The Last Available Burial Ground on Manhattan Island,” At Rise magazine; "Pose Please," Silo magazine (1993); “May 4, 1970,” Viet Nam War Generation Journal (Dec. 2002); “Jakey, Get Out of the Buggy,” Chronogram (Feb. 2003), "The Hearing," Epiphany (spring 2005).

Articles: Spirituality & Health, Parabola, New Renaissance, Guideposts, Conscious Choice, Houseplant Magazine, Indoor & Patio Gardening, GreenPrints, The American Gardener, Cat Fancy, Dog Fancy, and DogGone. Columnist for UPI's Religion & Spirituality Forum.

With her screenwriting partner/mother, Edna Robinson, she was awarded a 1987/88 Writers Guild East fellowship to write a movie, The Love Convention.

Betsy has had an eclectic career. She served as an editor and promotional consultant to the Ringing Rocks Foundation on their Profiles of Healing book/digital recording series, is currently freelancing as a writer/editor/book doctor, and has had many other jobs ... other lives ... in no particular order:

apprentice film editor and projectionist; tutor; art bookstore clerk & picture framer; label typist; reader for the blind; notary public; artist's model for one naked year; paralegal at a record company; traveling houseplant caretaker; janitor; legal secretary; messenger; chambermaid at a Holiday Inn in Lake Placid, NY (don't ever stay there!); advertising, PR, and TV comedy (a show about ducks) writer; dogwalker; Family Court and Transit Authority transcriptionist; fortune cookie writer for Goldberg's Funny Fortune Cookies; hostess at the International House of Pancakes. ... Phew

Current Areas of Interest, Passion, and Enthusiastic Curiosity

I've been reading a lot of neuroscience about brain plasticity and I've been correlating it to some alternative therapies for change. It is incredibly exciting stuff, and I hope to publish an article about it soon in Spirituality & Health magazine.

A very exciting new book is neuroscientist Andrew Newberg's How God Changes Your Brain, due out next March from Ballantine Books.

Also in my pile is an extraordinary book by philosopher/China expert/statistician Tad Waddington, Ph.D., called Lasting Contribution: How to Think, Plan, and Act to Accomplish Meaningful Work.

For pure inspiration, coming out next April from Sterling Publishing, there's a book of interviews with extraordinary activist women — from Nobel Peace Prize winners to artists and entrepreneurs — Our Stories, Our Visions by Zoe Sallis.

I'm predicting a bestselling book and blockbuster movie for Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult by Jayanti Tamm, due out from Crown Publishing in April. Tamm is a skillful storyteller with an absolutely unique story that I'm guessing everybody will relate to.

And in case you need to know how to help somebody with a terminal illness, I highly recommend Prayers & Rituals at a Time of Illness & Dying: The Practices of Five World Religions by Pat Fosarelli, M.D., D.Min. from Templeton Foundation Press.

And for weekly rejuvenation, I listen (and have been doing so for years) to Jonathan Schwartz's brilliant Saturday and Sunday music shows featuring an eclectic mix, loosely entitled "The American Songbook." Check your local NPR stations for times.

I also recommend jumping on a trampoline. It'll goose your lymphatic system and lift your mood. Maybe I'll go do that now ...