Nancer Ballard is a practicing lawyer, writer, maker of artists’ books, and a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Study Research Center where she leads multi-disciplinary creative projects that combine science, humanities, creative writing, and fine arts.
She is currently leading The Heroine’s Journey project which examines alternatives to Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey in psychology, mythology, international folk and fairy tales, literature, and contemporary women and marginalized groups. The project includes multi-disciplinary workshops for artists, writers, and students; creative writing; and art. Her other recent projects include Time, Meaning-Making and the Construction of Narrative, and How We Are Changed by The Things That Don’t Happen.
Prior to joining Brandeis, Nancer worked as a photojournalist and arts and film critic, and taught creative writing and several interdisciplinary courses that combined humanities and fine arts. She is the author of Dead Reckoning (poetry), and her fiction and creative nonfiction, and essays have been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She co-wrote a children’s supplemental textbook that teaches elementary school mathematics through cross-cultural storytelling. Her artist’s books have appeared most recently in Beyond the Book VII and Beyond the Book VIII at the Boston Public Library. She has an MFA from Bennington College in Creative Writing and Literature and has studied bookmaking with Anne Pelikan of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and with Carol Barton at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine.
She participated in UVA’S EPIC exhibition in 2014 at the Harvard Ed Portal and Olympic SPIRIT at the Scollay Square Gallery in 2015.
Exhibitions: Portraits in Refuge
Her personal artist website is nancerballard.com
