2025 Teachers
2025 Guest Teachers
Aylie Baker
Aylie grew up in Yarmouth, Maine and spent much of her childhood sailing downeast with her family along the coast of Wabanakik–the Dawn Land–ancestral home of the Wabanaki peoples. Her life is deeply influenced by time she spent living in Micronesia in her twenties, sailing traditional canoes and supporting the continuance of canoe culture there. She now lives near Lake Champlain, where she is a student at the Vermont Zen Center. She works as a preschool teacher, a gardener and a clinical herbalist. You can find her writings in publications such as Emergence Magazine and find her quietly storytelling on The Moth.
Matthew Glassman
Matthew Glassman is a father/ writer/ actor/ creator of original, ensemble theatre. Performing, creating, and collaborating is his passion and calling. Currently the Executive & Artistic Director of the Chocolate Church Arts Center in Bath, Maine, Matthew is the former Co-Artistic Director and Ensemble Member for over 20 years of Double Edge Theatre. For over two decades, he co-created and performed in dozens of site-specific spectacles and indoor performances that toured around the world. Matthew loves making connections between the realms of imagination with the becoming of community, the unfolding of dreams, the awe of the natural world, and building grass-roots movements toward systemic change. He believes art is intrinsic to the health and happiness of a community. Making art in rural and working communities is where it’s at for Matthew. Since 2022, he’s been working with children as part of his artistic work, with a project called the Unnameable Children’s Project that fashions itself as a black mountain college for kids.
Steven Scafidi
Steve Scafidi is the author of Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), For Love of Common Words (LSU 2006), The Cabinetmaker’s Window (LSU 2014), To the Bramble and the Briar (University of Arkansas Press, 2014) and a chapbook Songs for the Carry-On (Q Avenue Press, 2013). He has won the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the James Boatwright Prize and the Miller Williams Prize. He works as a cabinetmaker and lives with his family in Summit Point, West Virginia.
Abraham Sussman
Halima and Abraham are Senior Mentor Teachers of the Dances of Universal Peace. These sacred movement and music practices bring joy and heart connection to circles and communities. They are a form of active meditation, with live music, drawn from the diverse cultural roots of Universal Sufism. . They travel and teach internationally, and are inspired musicians and experienced guides on the path of the awakening heart. Their teaching taps into the depths that arise from integrating spiritual practice, psychological exploration and a love of the natural world.
Halima Sussman
Halima and Abraham are Senior Mentor Teachers of the Dances of Universal Peace. These sacred movement and music practices bring joy and heart connection to circles and communities. They are a form of active meditation, with live music, drawn from the diverse cultuiral roots of Universal Sufism. . They travel and teach internationally, and are inspired musicians and experienced guides on the path of the awakening heart. Their teaching taps into the depths that arise from integrating spiritual practice, psychological exploration and a love of the natural world.
2025 Community Teachers
Timothy Frantzich
Timothy Frantzich has been working in music and with community for the last 35 years. For the last five years, Timothy has led a community song circle every week in Minneapolis, he calls it “Perfection-Free Community Singing,” you can follow that group on Facebook. Timothy has come to believe that singing together and creating harmony on the fly is the medicine for this time. You will have the option of singing every morning at the Great Mother Conference for an hour before daybreak.
Bruce Hamm
Sarod artist Bruce Hamm is a long time disciple of the revered Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Bruce began his studies with Khansahib at the Ali Akbar College in 1974. He has pursued a serious and continuous study of instrumental and vocal music since then.
In 1981 he performed the traditional thread tying ceremony to symbolize his bond to his Guru. Bruce is one of a handful of disciples chosen by Khansahib to be main instructors at the Ali Akbar College after his passing.
Bruce has had the opportunity on multiple occasions to accompany his Guru Ali Akbar Khan onstage. He has also had the privilege of performing with many of India’s leading artists, including Swapan Chaudhuri, Zakir Hussain and Anindo Chatterjee. Bruce continues his mentor’s legacy today as a respected teacher and performer, mesmerizing crowds worldwide and keeping alive the tradition of the Maihar Gharana.
Jay Leeming
Jay Leeming is a performance storyteller adept at bringing ancient myths and stories alive through the power of the spoken word. A regular performer in theaters, schools, festivals and National Parks, he is the creator of the Crane Bag podcast, the author of three books of poetry and the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. More information about his work as well as recordings of his performances of the Epic of Gilgamesh, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” numerous Norse myths and the Odyssey can be found at www.JayLeeming.com.
Joanna Mack
From 1997 to 2005, Joanna Mack traveled to Kolkata, India where she fully devoted herself to the pursuit of North Indian Classical Music and the sitar under the guidance of the Pandit Deepak Choudhury, a senior disciple of the renowned Pandit Ravi Shankar. Returning to the United States, she had the honour to attend classes at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music with Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. She now continues her life-long journey with regular classes with Sitarist Pandit Partha Chatterjee and Sarodia Bruce Hamm. She teaches private and group classes and performs in a variety of venues worldwide.
Cary Odes
Since ancient times, the trickster has been a powerful and vibrant part of any community.
With quick wit and brave insight, they skewer the pompous and bring balance to somber proceedings. But instead, the conference is bringing back Cary Odes. Cary has been lifting the spirits of the conference on and off since 1979, and provides the best mythopoetic comedy you'll ever hear in a camp in Maine. In his book Iron John, Robert Bly called Cary “the Trickster in a wonderfully pure form.” Because of Bly’s influence in the comedy world, Cary’s career was transformed overnight, and was forever after exactly the same.
Cary may also teach workshops in Nature Awareness, (which, oddly he can actually do) including how to leave a building and not walk immediately into another building, sometimes for days in a row. He makes the fastest bow drill fire of any professional comedian.
Miguel Rivera
Miguel Rivera was born in Guatemala and moved to the United States in 1966 at the age of 13.
A dedicated translator and cultural bridge-builder, he collaborated with Robert Bly in 2001 to translate and publish Poems I Brought Down from the Mountain, an English collection of poetry by Humberto Ak'abal. His translation work also includes bilingual editions such as Tejiendo las Huellas (Uruguay, 2006), El Animalero (Guatemala, 2008), and In the Courtyard of the Moon (U.S., 2021).
Since 1993, Miguel has been a core teacher at the Minnesota Men’s Conference and, since 2010, at The Great Mother Conference. He has also served as a board member of Shade Tree, a mentoring group in Los Angeles, since its inception in 1996. As the Director and Co-founder of the Western Gate Roots Foundation, he works to restore rites of passage for youth.
Miguel is a Guild of Future Architects member and serves on the advisory boards of Wolf Connection and Mil-Tree. He was previously on the Board of Directors for Soldier’s Heart, an organization dedicated to supporting veterans.
In addition to his mentorship and cultural work, Miguel is the Co-producer and Sound Designer for the School of Lived Experience podcasts. He has been an award-winning Supervising Sound Editor for film and television since 1984.
Marcus Wise
Marcus Wise tabla artist. Disciple of Ustad Diam Ali Qadri . 50 years performing for GMC accompanying myriad of poets and musicians. Has concertized extensively across the world and has recorded on myriad of albums/cds and movies. Marcus has many students and continues teaching private lessons from his home.
2025 Art Gallery Director
Clara DeGalan
Clara DeGalan is a visual artist based in Ann Arbor, MI. Her work has been featured locally and nationally in group, three-person, and solo exhibitions. Her art criticism has been published in Detroit Art Review, Essay'd, and InfiniteMile among others. She has curated exhibitions at The Scarab Club Detroit, The University of Toledo, Wayne State University, and The Great Mother and New Father Conference.
2025 Youth Program Directors
Emilia Dahlin
Emilia Dahlin is an award-winning singer/songwriter and teaching artist who believes that stories and songs are some of the most powerful tools to connect us and foster positive change.
Emilia traversed the U.S. while touring for a decade, was part of the founding team of Rippleffect (an outdoor experiential non-profit, that still serves thousands of children each year off their island base in Casco Bay), and spent a year-long pilgrimage visiting intentional communities across the globe. She’s deeply committed to exploring and supporting combinations of community and the arts and how they heal and nurtures us.
Emilia's the founder and facilitator of Sing Me A Story, a professional development workshop for early childhood educators and librarians who wish to enliven, strengthen, and widen their learning spaces through song. Emilia’s also a mother, gardener, activist, and outdoor enthusiast who loves to dance!
Owen Murphy
Owen Murphy is a US Coast Guard credentialed boat captain, Registered Maine Guide, and the owner/operator of Maine Coastal Adventures– a lobster tour company based out of Phippsburg ME. With a Wilderness First Responder medical certification and experience as a former trip leader with the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, Owen is passionate about connecting people to nature. He holds two Maine state teaching certifications and has over ten years of experience teaching Spanish and English as a Second Language in US public schools. Owen has also taught environmental and outdoor education both in the US and abroad. He currently resides in coastal Maine and Mexico with his wife, Courtney, and their two children, Oisín and Caoimhe. Owen is excited to lead the kids' program alongside Emilia after years of hearing how magical the program is from Courtney (who is off in Peru during this time).