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Amy Martin, a life-long Texan, has forged a career of excellence in journalism while engaged in a unique and varied life laced with activism. After graduating early from Walden Preparatory in Dallas in 1973, she spent a few years as a back-to-the-land cucumber farmer in northeast Texas, before returning to Dallas. While bartending her way through college, she received a bachelor of fine arts in broadcast journalism with a natural sciences minor from Southern Methodist University.

Her path to a film and television career was diverted while pulling a late-night shift at the SMU radio station in the early 1980s. The station received a phone call from jazz musician Pat Metheny and her ensuing interview and articles in the college newspaper launched her career into music journalism. Quickly snapped up by the weekly Dallas Observer, she originated the newspaper’s music coverage and the highly regarded Street Beat column.

Martin moved on to the Dallas Times Herald daily newspaper where she made her mark as an arts reviewer specializing in the eclectic, becoming the only comedy critic in the Southwest. She was a regular commentator for four years in the local Morning Edition news segment at KERA 90.1 FM and served as substitute host for Karen Denard’s Evening Talk Show.

During a journalism break to heal from a rare connective tissue tumor, Martin helped start the first recycling efforts in Dallas as a leader in her neighborhood association. She shifted from music to environmental journalism when was invited to join the Dallas Morning News daily newspaper. She created the first newspaper recycling coverage in Dallas in her noted monthly page titled Talking Trash.

Martin was lured to the national environmental magazine Garbage in the mid 1980s where she became contributing editor and staff writer, penning several cover stories, including the noted Petrochemical Primer series. Deemed “the Dear Abby of Trash,” she was lauded for her monthly column Ask Garbage where she dispensed wry humor along with recycling advice. She was an original registrar in Citation’s Who’s Who Environmental Registry and a founding member of Society of Environmental Journalists.

A spiritual epiphany on a Winter Solstice day led Martin to begin staging Winter SolstiCelebration events every December, growing into the second largest Winter Solstice event in the nation, attracting over a thousand people. She created and produced dozens of seasonal and lunar events, including the acclaimed Summer SolstiCelebrations that attracted over 2500 people to White Rock Lake.

These events are now presented by the nonprofit group Earth Rhythms, (www.EarthRhythms.org) where she is executive director. In 2009, the group began presenting concerts and lectures by spiritual acts, including bring chant singer Deva Premal to Dallas for the first time. A local variety show, Moonlady Nght, is presented one to two times a year. Earth Rhythms unveiled FlowFest, a movement and creativity festival, in April 2011.

Martin has become a well-known North Texas leader in Earth-centered and interfaith spirituality. She writes weekly from the Taoism and spiritual-not-religious perspective for the popular Dallas Morning News interfaith blog Texas Faith and sits on several interfaith boards.

Martin is a popular speaker, teacher and workshop presenter on a variety of spiritual, entertainment and intellectual topics. She has presented for groups such as Mensa and schools including Fun Ed and SMU Continuing Education. She is a guest preacher at area Unitarian Universalist churches and has lectured nationally, including the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley and Circle Sanctuary in Wisconsin.

Regarded by many as the “Moonlady” (www.moonlady.com), she has operated a successful online newsletter for North Texas called Moonlady News since the mid 1980s. Now with 3200 members, the email distribution service covers non-mainstream spirituality, plus environmental, holistic, progressive, intellectual and eclectic events in North Texas. In the fall of 2011, it expanded into a community website portal with a calendar, directory and interactive area.

Continuing her decades long journalism career, in 2008 she created the self-publishing firm Moonlady Media with her husband‚ artist and computer animator Scooter Smith. In addition, Moonlady Media produces books, both printed and electronic, on a variety of topics. Martin’s first book, “Holy Smoke: Loose Herbs & Hot Embers for Intense Group Smudges & Smoke Prayers,” arose from her ceremonial experience. A book on poison ivy is in production and she is currently writing and collecting material on a book about the spiritual-not-religious movement.

Martin and her husband share their wooded East Dallas home with several cats‚ two dogs and a variety of wildlife. They are developing a contemplative nature preserve northeast of Dallas. She sums up career with the following quote:

“More than a writer, I am an educator working in a variety of mass media by articulating complex, provocative and sometimes highly technical issues. Always coherent and comprehensive, but also eloquent and lightheartedly wry, I strive to relate the topic to a wider picture, a conceptual premise. As a producer, publisher, editor, teacher and list-serve manager, I initiate discussions, organize projects and serve as a conduit to bring people and ideas together. All this is done out of a deep sense of service to mankind and belief in the power of individual action and positive change through communication.”

www.moonlady.com www.earthrhythms.org