The short version?

Heather Shayne Blakeslee is a Philadelphia-based non-profit and small business executive with an award-winning, 25-year career working in social justice, arts, media, and environmental spheres. In response to a climate of self-censorship and degraded discourse in our broader culture, she founded the print journal Root Quarterly, and believes in the idea that art and ideas can bring us together to celebrate our common humanity. It was named a Best New Magazine by Library Journal when it launched in 2019, and is a grantee of the Mercatus Center’s Pluralism and Civil Exchange Program, a recipient of Comcast Rise award, and is currently raising funds to expand via The Root Quarterly Fund for Regenerative Media. RQ is an editorial partner of The Philadelphia Citizen and Free Black Thought, and partners with Old Swedes’ Episcopal Church on a free, public, collective sense-making series. Blakeslee is also an award-winning singer songwriter who leads the folk-noir band Sweetbriar Rose, and a prolific essayist who writes about art, the Mid-Atlantic region, and culture broadly. She has served as a volunteer Arts Fellow with the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism since 2022, and now proudly sits on their board of directors. For two years, she served as volunteer Pennsylvania state co-coordinator with the political depolarization organization Braver Angels, and is committed to the ideas of pluralism, free expression, and civil discourse.

WHERE I’M COMING FROM

I reject the notion that you can either be a visionary or an operations manager: As an English and Philosophy major in college, I took turns in theatre productions and tutored logic. I dream in stories and spreadsheets.

If it means anything to you, the folks at Meyers-Briggs think I'm an INTJ that likes to think big and get things done.

I consider myself a Type A Bohemian.

I live, work, write, garden, make music, and produce music and theater shows in Philadelphia, Pa, and I’m also currently dealing with a breast cancer diagnosis that I’m trying hard not to let slow me down.

For twenty-five years, I’ve helped build and run nonprofits and small businesses. I’ve served at different times in organizations focused on the arts, social justice, and at sustainability organizations. I have been an executive director, a board member, and a volunteer at various organizations, sometimes concurrently.

I make art, every day. My tiny cottage in Queen Village, affectionately referred to by friends as “The Shire,” contains two gardens (and another down the street), two humans, a rescue cat, and many, many instruments, including a cello named Alezan Germaine that I started learning to play when I turned 40 (it’s never too late…), and most recently, a violin that will be used for reels and jigs, not Bach and Brahms. I'm into civics, and in that way, politics. I like to cook; soups and stews and anything slow cooked is my speciality. My folk-noir band's name is Sweetbriar Rose and we're releasing a second record in 2025 that we recorded before the pandemic silenced stages.

I am in awe of the writing of Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Marilynne Robinson, Cynthia Ozick, Joan Didion, and Toni Morrison. I loved watching as Christopher Hitchens defanged his foes, and mostly agree with Sam Harris. I’m glad, though, that people are starting to realize that religion, ritual, ceremony, and community are important aspects of living a fulfilled life, even if they are, as Pennsylvania poet Wallace Stevens wrote, Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction. I partner gladly with Old Swedes Episcopal Church on “Sense-making at Old Swedes” and enjoy deep conversations.

I laugh wildly at the podcast Red Scare and other winkingly irreverent conversations. I find the analysis on the podcast The 5th Column to be essential listening if you want to understand American discourse right now, and thank them for their humor as well. If we can't laugh in the face of the existential threats we’re facing, we may not make it.

I’m grateful to E.O. Wilson for his gentle and brilliant explanations about our place in the world. I almost became a biologist and animal psychologist, and during movies I often cheer for the dragons, apes, plants, dinosaurs, or other species who should, at any chance they get, rightly remind us of our hubris as humans. Credit is given to Homo sapiens, however, for creating art, red wine, and good bread. Humans are not perfect, but we still do things worth debating and celebrating.

I believe in empowering people and communities to create a thriving economy and a living future, and that we can do that in part through the humanities. New organizations, media outlets, and higher learning institutions such as Ralston College are rising from the wreck of our current culture, which has been devastated by how social media weaponizes our worst instincts.

I want to make Philadelphia a world-class city and Pennsylvania a model of political depolarization and sustainable regional economies. I want to promote regional tourism and celebrate our arts and culture, our beautiful landscapes, and the creative and industrious people of my home state. I want our country to find itself again and continue to strive for its ideals. Depolarization and economic development are entwined, and in need of new thinking and leadership. Politics should not be a zero-sum game, and common ground is more abundant and more fertile than many of us currently believe.

Founding Root Quarterly in 2019 was and is part of my contribution to righting that story. Root Quarterly is a Philadelphia-based journal of art and ideas that was named a Best New Magazine by Library Journal when it launched in 2019; they said we were, “A joy to leaf through… and read.” RQ’s values center around open inquiry and free debate, civic dialogue, pluralism, depolarization, and the power of art and beauty to bring us together in our common humanity. We offer artist profiles, cultural criticism and analysis, poetry, fiction, and book excerpts and reviews, as well as highlights of regional makers, entrepreneurs, and thinkers. We relish heterodox thinking, and we don’t care what political party you belong to. Heather Heying of the DarkHorse podcast (where I get my biology fix) called us, “Glorious,” and said, “This is exactly what we need right now... This is our better angels and we owe it to ourselves, and all of us—and our future—to engage with art, and with science, with truth and with beauty, with honor, and without division.” We are community based in curiosity and I hope you’ll join us.

We are a first-round grantee of the Pluralism and Civil Exchange program at George Mason’s Mercatus Center.

For over two years, from 2021 t0 2024, I volunteered as the ‘blue’ co-chair along with a beloved ‘red’ counterpart for the state of Pennsylvania for the national, nonpartisan depolarization organization Braver Angels. I also volunteer in efforts for the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), which advocates for a pro-human approach to social justice work that centers on respect for individuals and the principles of fairness, understanding, and humanity. I am a board member and one of their FAIR Arts Fellows, and we welcome people to join us if they are interested in building a new culture in the arts and media that “champions freedom of expression, open-mindedness, and the ability to strive for excellence in all creative endeavors.” You can hear more of my thinking about slow media, civil dialogue, and the culture war in this conversation with Unity Now.

In short: I am near to being a free speech absolutist, and I’m alarmed at the self-censoring going on among Americans. I’ve been studying, experiencing, writing, and publishing about the culture war, especially in-fighting within the left, since 2015.

Few have better articulated the split in ideological framework and the resulting required tactics to build a more just society than John Wood Jr.. I highly recommend his article “Reclaiming Nonviolence in the Age of Antiracism.” Though others disagree, I still firmly believe in Dr. King’s clear-eyed, hopeful, loving, and forgiving approach. I also highly recommend Jonathan’s Haidt’s essential book, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.” It’s clear that the “exhausted majority” of people in our country are not well represented by our politicians and institutions, and so it’s heartening to see new growth everywhere. Black intellectuals such as York College of PA’s Erec Smith, Founder of Free Black Thought (now and RQ Editorial partner) and a proponent of empowerment theory, as well as Chloe Valdery and her Theory of Enchantment, are very much worth understanding as options for work in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space.

In 2018, I started Red Pen Arts, LLC, a consultancy that specializes in strategy, operations, event, and editorial support for social entrepreneurs and the arts and culture community. Most recently, in contributing to work at Jazz Philadelphia, I helped to build another organization from the ground up, and created programs that will help jazz artists build sustainable careers and to restore intergenerational connections among musicians lost to the institutionalization of education. I’m was excited to position Philadelphia as an international jazz destination as part of building Philadelphia’s overall arts economy. During the pandemic, I created the Hometown Heroes program to highlight our incredible artists while tours and shows were canceled, and loved the Homecoming Jam during the Jazz Philadelphia Summit, a thought-leadership and professional development conference. Ultimately, the city should know, love, and cheer on its quartets as well as its quarterbacks.

One of my current grant writing and development clients is Philly Friendship Circle, which helps build friendships between kids with and without disabilities in a context that’s friendly to observant Jewish families and others.

I’ve been honored to receive citations for my work over the past 25 years from the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, Philadelphia City Council, and others. 

IN THE RECENT and DISTANT 9 - 5 PAST, AND THE STOMACH ACHE THAT STARTED IT ALL

Just prior to starting Red Pen Arts, I was the COO of Red Flag Media, where I was also the Editor-in-Chief of Grid, a Philadelphia-based urban culture and sustainability magazine. My favorite part of my job was doing feature interviews with thinkers such as environmentalist Bill McKibben, philosopher Peter Singer, Pulitzer-Prize winning science writer Elizabeth Kolbert, and fiction writer Amitav Ghosh. 

I’ve served on the board for the Philadelphia Folksong Society, the literary organization Bluestoop, the advisory board for Overbrook Environmental Education Center, and for art and sustainability organization RAIR. I co-chaired Philadelphia's Urban Sustainability Forum, and held various volunteer posts with the U.S. Green Building Council, at one time co-chairing its Social Justice subcommittee. For seven years, I worked at the Delaware Valley Green Building Council (now Green Building United), eventually serving as its Deputy Executive Director. In my last project there, over three years, I organized and then led the 150-person volunteer Host Committee and accompanying projects and event production when the Greenbuild International Conference & Expo was held in Philadelphia in 2013. Earlier in Philadelphia, I worked on the multimillion-dollar capital campaign for the LEED Platinum renovation of Friends Center, a historic Quaker complex and locus for peace and social justice in the city.  I also worked as a bookkeeper and communications specialist for Bread & Roses Community Fund, a social justice grant-making organization. 

Prior to moving to Philadelphia, I spent six years in New York City at Poets & Writers, a national nonprofit literary organization that believes literature is vital to sustaining a vibrant culture, where I created programs to help literary writers build their careers.

Also in New York, I worked very, very briefly in the advertising industry. It was an awful, soul-destroying job. Every day on the train to work, I had a terrible stomach ache, and I resolved to love what I did every day forever after that.

And so I did.


ABOUT THAT WHOLE BAND THING AND OTHER CREATIVE PROJECTS

I’m the guitarist, lead vocalist, and songwriter for the folk-noir band Sweetbriar Rose, which plays regularly in the Philadelphia region (or did pre-pandemic…). We’ve been featured at regional venues and festivals such as World Cafe Live, Bourbon & Branch, numerous Sexton Sideshow productions, the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the Brandywine Folk Festival, Haverford Music Festival, Bethlehem's Musikfest, and at the New Jersey Folk Festival, at which I was honored with a singer-songwriter award in 2014. I was also awarded best songwriter and best Americana act at the Elephant Talk Music Awards in 2015. 

The band's 2013 debut album, Cultivar, was called "impressive and spooky" by critic A.D. Amorosi of the Philadelphia City Paper and "a terrific CD" by the iconic Gene Shay, long-running host of WXPN's The Folk Show. The Philadelphia Folk Song society counts Sweetbriar Rose among their "most exciting and boundary-pushing acts." I love singing with my brothers in arms in Dirty Soap.

For five years, I was also a ringleader in the all-girl old-timey country trio The Estelles, and for many years was a solo artist in New York City. I have two solo albums—Bones and Treon's Cut Rate—and an EP, Mercy Mountain, in my catalogue. Sweetbriar Rose recorded a new record pre-pandemic, which we’re working on releasing in 2025. I studied cello at Settlement Music School with Carolyn Ellman, and was able record some cello tracks on the forthcoming album, Black-Eyed Susan, produced with Andrew Lipke.

I’m also a writer, and I’m currently doing research to write a book on growing up in Pennsylvania. I’m working with Jeremy, my photographer brother on editorial direction for his book about Pennsylvania’s industrial and energy history, told through meticulous photographic documentation of place and objects.

My first publication, in 1998, was a critique of digital publishing in the anthology "Without Covers" with Purdue University Press, and since that time my writing has been featured at the Philadelphia Erotic Literary Salon, where I’ve served as a co-producer and guest host; at the 2012 Philadelphia Fringe Festival in my multimedia production "The Articulate Landscape"; in the 2018 Vagina Monologues-inspired Earlie Bird Productions stage show "V2: Creation Myth," for which I also served as script editor and as part of the cast; and through various other venues and publications, including Mindful and Grid. I was also thrilled to do a Joni Mitchell tribute in the 2018 Fringe Festival show “Paprika Plains” with Jessica Noel of Philly PACK, and in the 2019 production “DREDx” from Earlie Bird Productions as an editor and actor.

Every three months, I make a new magazine at Root Quarterly filled with truth and beauty (and I hope you’ll subscribe!).

As the world cautiously opens and evolves and as we reclaim our culture from social-media induced madness, I’m starting to play music for other people again.

I’m starting to hope again.

Life is art. Make it beautiful.