Araminta Star Matthews

Araminta Star Matthews is an academic with scholarly publications in instructional design for artists and integration of AI in education, an artist and writer, an art educator, a professor of both graduate and undergraduate courses in a variety of subjects, and a senior eLearning designer. Her Renaissance background is a perfect blend for her genre, wellness, and academic works alike. Formerly the Associate Dean of Graduate and Professional Studies at Maine College of Art and Design, she is presently serving in multiple roles in higher education leadership across a variety of institutions. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (a terminal degree in Fine Arts) as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the same discipline with minors in French and Gender Studies. She also holds certificates in instructional design, death doula services, life coaching, art-coaching, digital curation, career development facilitation, and teaching. In addition to writing, she has worked on countless online courses for both the private and public sector, developing and supporting the creation of instructional content for higher education courses. She also teaches Creative Writing, Introduction to Ethics, and Information Literacy for the University of Maine at Presque Isle online, Psychology for Kennebec Valley Community College, Graduate classes in Instructional Design and Project Management for the University of Maine and Methods of Teaching Art in the K-12 Classroom for the Maine Educator Consortium in collaboration with SNHU.

She began her writing career in the horror genre, writing young adult, supernatural fiction. While this genre still holds a place in her heart, she is moving toward more practical content, such as holistic wellness and personal development guides. She has coauthored with Stan Swanson and Dr. Rachel Lee to produce the alternative writing instructional guide, Write of the Living Dead, and she has recently worked with The Lune Innate to produce a crystal self-care and wellness book. Her most recent work focuses on applying folklore and myths of international goddesses to the work of self-healing and recovery, as well as genre works in the fields of supernatural romantic-mystery and historical fiction-mystery.

Because Araminta can't bring herself to sit still even for a moment, she spends the bulk of her time with her favorite human being (her child and kindred spirit ginger-mini) and the rest of her spare time (when she is not teaching or writing or editing) playing MMORPG's, reading (mostly classics), making art, serving nonprofits, and inventing. She is also a lifelong learner and routinely takes courses in disciplines that interest her, including priestess services, death doula services, art coaching, life coaching, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, yoga teaching, crystal healing certification, Reiki, web development, animation, and digital curation.