Welcome to CleisAbeni.com. 

Warm greetings to you! My names are Cleis Abeni (Upāsikā tree turtle). 
This website is devoted to my work as a writer and editor. I am a longtime community builder, movement organizer, and advocate for peace, justice, equality, and environmental care. For over 30 years, I have been an ordained Buddhist Upāsikā, a professional writer, an investigative journalist, a grant-writer, a creative writer, and a multifaceted editor (both freelance and on-staff). I have also been a nonprofit executive and an administrator that has helped several organizations execute high-quality violence prevention projects, justice-oriented programs, and educational programming, as well as operations and fundraising. I was the staff copyeditor for the Baltimore Alternative; a staff writer and editor for the Institute for Survey Research; and a reporter for the Baltimore City Paper and the Philadelphia City Paper. ​My journalism, essays, poems, and fiction have also appeared in 30-plus news outlets, literary magazines and journals since 1988 like Reimagining Magazine; Prick of the Spindle; Capitol Black Arts Bulletin; Mountain Record: The Zen Practitioner's Journal; Columbus Alive; Dance Research Journal; Dance Magazine; Dance View; Ploughshares; Good Foot Magazine; Fence Magazine; Identity Principle; Locus; Press Board Press Magazine; Spoon; The New Baltimore Visitor; Urbanite; The Formalist; The James White Review; Journal for the Anthropological Study of Human Movement; Hook; The Washington Review; Tomorrow Speculative Fiction Magazine; and more. ​I am the part-time in-house editor for American Editions, a progressive book arts publishing company. Feel free to visit my other website: www.treeturtle.com.

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