Marlene Schiwy, Ph.D., is the author of A Voice of Her Own: Women and the Journal Writing Journey, Simple Days: A Journal on What Really Matters, and Gypsy Fugue: An Archetypal Memoir. Her first story was published when she was 13 years old and she never looked back. Her journal consists of more than two hundred volumes, and her book, A Voice of Her Own, has inspired thousands of women to deepen their own writing practice.
Formerly a professor of world literature, creative writing, and women’s studies in the City University of New York, Marlene received her Ph.D. from the University of London and conducted extensive Jungian studies at the International School of Analytical Psychology in Zürich. Her filmed interviews with the well-known Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman and the Conscious Feminine were released in 2012 and are available in digital form.
Marlene has taught personal writing courses, professional development seminars, and Jungian expressive arts workshops to thousands of students in North America and Europe for more than thirty-five years. She continues to teach internationally including week-long Body Soul Writing retreats in Europe. In 2022 she introduced a yearlong Body Soul Writing Teacher Training Program for women who want to create their own workshops and retreats.
Marlene received a Canada Council grant to work on a book about her parents’ experience of growing up in Germany during WWII and their postwar immigration to Canada. Her new book, The Art of Creating Soulful Spaces for Women: A Guide and Companion, will be published by New Society Press in the spring of 2026. A documentary about her work is slated to be made in 2025.
To all of her endeavors Marlene brings a lifelong love of the creative process and her own intense engagement with the ongoing alchemy of everyday life. A lifelong spiritual wanderer, she has been privileged to work with thousands of women exploring their own creative gifts and soul journeys along the way.