About Kathy Szaj
Kathy Szaj, M.Ed., writer, teacher, and children's book author, is blatantly nuts about all things story that make her sigh, cry, or laugh (or all three). This affliction caused her to write three published children’s books: I Hate Goodbyes (“Outstanding” by Parent Council, Ltd.), Elizabeth, Who Is NOT A Saint (an International Reading Association/ Children’s Book Council Children’s Choice book; also selected as “Outstanding” by Parent Council, Ltd.) and Hurry Up, Harry!
She is currently working on creating a place of real magic called Planet TruePower, featuring a new children’s book series called “Fear Monster Friends,” for kids, ages 4-8 (and adults who secretly read to kids to camouflage their own love affair with children’s books; yes, we know who we are). Kathy’s addiction for story, children’s books, and authentic power led her to Adventures to Awesome (ATA) as lead writer, where she's been happily “making up stuff” with her Creative Writing Team+ collaborators.
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(Okay, so maybe you're curious and want to know more a bit more about what Kathy likes to think about and what she's been up to? Keep reading...)
Kathy has deduced that opening presence—by living and giving the gifts we already are—is our only authentic power. She has played with this hunch by teaching (in graduate organizational leadership programs at Mercy College and Lehman College, both located in New York, NY), co-facilitating and offering workshops in the Career Development and Life Design Group at All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City, and facilitating Adult Fear Monster Detection Coaxing, er, Coaching.
Kathy’s New York City-based consulting umbrella, The Linking Verb ("unwrapping the gifts we ALREADY are, to build the world we dearly want"), was spun from numerous decades of contemplating aloud about living and giving our "deep-gladness gifts," prompted (and probably possessed) by Frederick Buechner's definition of vocation ("the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need"). Kathy’s pesky intuition is that becoming "vocationally aroused" (as the late futurist/visionary Barbara Marx Hubbard mischievously put it) is urgently needed at this time of world-shifting flux…and that her own evolving arousal involves helping to unwrap the unrepeatable, one-of-a-kind, deep-gladness gifts each of us is─for the good of the world.
In her decades of chameleonic life as educator and writer, Kathy has also been a marketer/promoter/publicist for literary and other artistic/creative projects and productions; a copyeditor and proofreader; an interdisciplinary curriculum designer; and a holistic childcare consultant to advise parents, nannies, and sitters. She can’t wait to see what other “colors” await her.
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