Rita Valencia (she/her)

Valencia has volunteered with Tools for Peace and Ari Bhöd since 2009. A graduate of the University of Maryland, Valencia’s professional career as a writer and graphic designer spans 40+ years. In design and entertainment advertising, she’s won multiple ad industry awards, and has had her work featured in Print Magazine Annuals and other publications. Her fiction and nonfiction has been published in anthologies, magazines, blogs and literary journals both online and in print, and her plays have been produced in New York and Los Angeles, receiving an LA Weekly Theater Award nomination for playwriting, winning grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. In 2017, she started Iron Hare Clayworks, designing and producing both ceramic art and functional forms.