Meet Laura Ann

RSCLA & FN3827Laura Ann Walton has had a lifelong bond with the Lion from the time she was a little girl growing up in Sacramento, California in the 1950’s.  Part I of God is a Lion is rich with detail about Sacramento in those days.  Raised a Catholic, she decided to become a  nun at the age of 18.  As a nun she taught and served in administrative roles in local Catholic high schools.  

In the 1980’s Laura Ann became a founding member of Loaves & Fishes, Sacramento a coalition of groups which offers a variety of services to the homeless. In 1986, Laura Ann became first Director of Maryhouse women’s daytime shelter. Based on her experiences with homeless women, Laura Ann went on to found Women’s Wisdom Art, an arts empowerment program for women. Wisdom Art has provided empowerment and healing opportunities for thousands of women in Sacramento for the past 25 years and is still carrying out this mission.

GetAttachment.aspxThe Lion, however, kept his claim on Laura Ann all during those years through dreams, stories, and events that border on the magical, including an unexpected meeting with a Goddess in Calcutta.  This bond with the Lion eventually led to her decision to leave the Catholic nun hood and follow her own spiritual path which, at the age of 68, led her to a wildlife refuge in Namibia entitled Harnas where she met Frikkie von Solms who shares her passion for the Lion.  It was there she decided to write God is a Lion and spent months in the presence of two magnificent brother lions, Zion and Trust, who had been hand raised by Frikkie.

This is the author’s first book length prose writing.  She considers herself to be primarily a poet and began writing poems as a young girl.  She began a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing at CSUS, but chose to discontinue academic work in order to give her energies to working with Loaves & Fishes. Her most recent poems are to be found in God is a Lion