Cheryl Hellner

Cheryl Hellner is a poet and storyteller, a teacher and retreat leader who embodies a lifelong passion for creativity, art, and the natural world. After graduate studies in Early Childhood Special Education, she worked with inner city childen in her local Head Start program evaluating special needs children and designing approaches that would help them to learn and flourish. Her passion for children's picture book stories grew from this work. Following her decade with Head Start, she worked in writing, editing, and small press publishing creating innovative editions of a new journal of faith and the arts, Potter's House Press, along with her good friend and co-editor, Gayle Boss. Cheryl lives with her husband, Jim, in a small solar cottage at Dayspring, a 206-acre retreat center of open fields, woods, streams, and ponds outside Washington, D.C. Together they work with children and adults designing programs, outings, and retreats that deepen our connection with the natural world.