Colleen Anderson is a truly multi-faceted artist--skilled with word, song, graphic design, photography, collage, origami and more. Based in Charleston, WV, she first came to West Virginia as a participant in VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) in Cabin Creek, West Virginia. There I helped start Cabin Creek Quilts, a cooperative of 150 low-income quilters. Following 15 months of volunteer service and a year of work as an editor, she returned to college, this time at West Virginia University, receiving a B.A. in English from WVU in 1975 and went on to earn a Master's degree in Humanities from Marshall University in 2000.

Self-employed as a writer and designer since 1975, Colleen formed Mother Wit Writing and Design in 1983. Her creative studio has earned numerous honors, including West Virginia Communicators' Best of Show award and several First Place awards from the National Federation of Press Women.

Colleen's stories and poems have been published by the PEN Syndicated Fiction Project, Redbook, Embers, Kestrel, Arts & Letters, Passager, Carolina Quarterly, The Sun, and many other periodicals. Her songs have been featured on Public Radio International's "Mountain Stage" and "The Folk Sampler," and she has produced two albums of original songs, Fabulous Realities (1991) and Going Over Home (2001).

Her song, "Death by Chocolate," has become a regular feature of WV Public Radio's annual February "Chocolate Challenge," and her song, "West Virginia Chose Me," is a well-loved testament to her adopted home.

Colleen's writing has earned two Individual Artist Fellowships from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts. I live and work in Charleston, West Virginia.

Colleen performs regularly with guitarist George Castelle, and has joined with Mountain Stage's Julie Adams and Karen Vuranch, who has been called West Virginia’s First Lady of Storytelling, to create a feast of stories, songs and poems called Potluck, which they'll be bringing to The BottlingWorks in April 2009.