About Me

Thanks for stopping by. I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to comment on posts, email me at nilwona(at)nilwona(dot)com or follow me on Twitter (nilwona) or Facebook (TheDreamerSpeaks).

Road Map

As you’re finding your way around the blog, here are a few posts I’d recommend. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Lessons learned from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was my most popular post. It’s viewed almost every day from as far away as Malaysia and Pakistan! One of the most difficult – but most important – posts I’ve written is Darlene. In Her Own Words, a tribute to a dear friend. To get a further peek into who I am, you definitely need to understand my journey with Crohn’s disease. I address it in a number of posts, including Nilwona: A True Story. To read more about the name “The Dreamer Speaks,” click here.

The “Formal” Stuff

Recent publications include Was Blind, but Now I See: My Sankofa Story, for the Redbud Post, “To Save Many Lives: Exploring Reconciliation Between Africans and African Americans through the Selling of Joseph,” for the Covenant Quarterly as well as devotionals for the Covenant Home Altar and the 2016 Lenten Reader (Evangelical Covenant Church of Canada). I’m a member of the Redbud Writers Guild and also a regular contributor to the Evangelical Covenant Church Commission on Biblical Gender Equality’s blog as well as the ECC’s Love Mercy Do Justice mission priority’s blog.

Although my most recent publications have been in the area of nonfiction, my heart belongs to fiction, and I’ve been winning writing awards since the third grade. In my teens, I realized that there was an absence of fiction books with protagonists who looked like me and with whom I could relate. So I decided that I would write those books. I’m currently working on my first fiction novel, Closer to Love.

As previously mentioned,  I consider myself a redemptive artist and am committed to bringing about God’s shalom in individuals and communities. As I do the work of helping to bring about God’s shalom, it manifests through a few specific lenses: leadership development, fulfilling purpose, and fighting injustice. Two underlying currents that run through all of these issues are intercultural competence and self/soul care.

Education

I earned a B.A. from Columbia College Chicago, an M.A. in Christian Formation and Certificate in Justice Ministry from North Park Theological Seminary and a Masters in Nonprofit Administration from North Park University. I’m currently working on a Masters of Divinity at North Park Theological Seminary.