Through SPEAKING AND LIVE ENGAGEMENTS , Award-winning author and Dream Maker, arts advocate and non-profit leader, Rayne Lacko helps children and adults struggling with difficult emotions to change the way they see their world using their natural creativity. Rayne is an in-demand facilitator leading arts-based workshops to transform emotions from darkness into light. A former magazine editor for over 15 years, she also helps aspiring professional writers elevate their craft. Rayne is a passionate mentor for self-expression, with a BA in Liberal Arts (majoring in Creative Writing), Graphic Design, and will graduate with her Masters in Humanities in Writing and Social-Emotional Learning in Fall 2023. She inspires others to dream up the life they wish to live, building the confidence to achieve their goals.
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Rayne Lacko (she/her) is the author of DREAM UP NOW: the Teen Journal for Self-Discovery (Free Spirit Publishing, 2020) and A SONG FOR THE ROAD (SparkPress, 2019), and offers transformative keynotes on fiction writing and social-emotional learning for K-12 and adults. As an advocate for the arts as a form of social and emotional well-being. She believes music, language, and art connect us and explores those themes in her novels, guided journals, online courses, speaking engagements, and in service to arts organizations.
She’s helped writers and teens cultivate creativity in Writers Digest, School Library Journal, DIYMFA.com, ParentMap, and GERM. Her short fiction and poetry appear in Ariel Chart International Literary Journal, Gravel, Mixtape Methodology, and Skyline. Her story, “Like Father, Like Son,” won Best of 2015 for its category at Wordhaus literary magazine. Rayne edited an outdoor adventure magazine with an annual circulation of 2.7 million for 12 years.
As a writing mentor, Rayne has cohosted creative youth workshops, an annual writing camp, and a teen arts showcase. She inspires young people and their families to use creativity to stimulate positive change in their lives and communities. Passionate about communication and art, Rayne made TV appearances representing her former blog on new motherhood. For over a decade, she edited an outdoor adventure magazine. Rayne is a Canadian residing on a forested island in Washington, US. Rayne is married with two children and a noisy cat.
Rayne grew up in Canada, earning a Liberal Arts degree in Toronto, including a semester in Spain, and a Graphic Design Diploma in Vancouver; then attended UCLA’s writer’s program. She is pursuing her Master’s in Humanities in Writing and Social-Emotional Learning at Antioch University and Creative Writing at Harvard University.
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