Chelan Harkin had a profound mystical experience at 21; in a time of mental/emotional anguish, she was shown how she needed to live in a more transparent and authentic way, and that she would access her gifts to the degree that she opened herself to joy, trauma, power, and tenderness. While Chelan recognized poetry as a love and a gift, its flow at that time was blocked by self-judgment and perfectionism. So she decided to allow herself to write “a bad poem” every day for a month. This unlocked a different creative process and a poetic force that has not stopped flowing. Her publishing journey is only two years old but her first two books, Susceptible to Light and Let Us Dance!, have been self-publishing successes with sales numbers to be envied by most poets today. Her third book, Wild Grace, publishes in November 2023 with Monkfish. Chelan lives with her children in the Pacific Northwest.