Lara Wilson, a writer, teacher and 40-year meditator, devotes her life to exploring the intersection of mindful wellbeing, inclusive storytelling and nature immersion. Intent to share the meditative practices that helped her through years of breast cancer treatment, she established the mindful wellness educational collaborative Be Well Be Here, a 501c3 nonprofit whose embodied practitioners offer trauma-informed mindful wellness practices, creative wellbeing BEtreats and inclusive community outreach. Lara has co-created mindful wellness practices with cancer patients, struggling students, teachers, parents, school communities, young athletes, disabled individuals, architects, celebrated authors, medical professionals, bankers, CEOs, children, artists - even horses. She holds a Master's Degree in English & American Literature from Harvard, a Graduate Certificate in Mindfulness Studies from Lesley University, and certification in Restorative Yoga (RYT-200) and Reiki Level II. Lara continually trains in a variety of mindful wellness fields, including meditation (vipassana and the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh), experiential learning, embodied social justice, energy healing, trauma awareness, qigong, Buddhist studies, and mindful movement. She regularly shares this integrated wisdom at conferences, wellness centers, corporate retreats, yoga studios, libraries, schools and in nature. Lara’s personal experiences with integrative healing have been included in medical case studies, and were featured in an article about cancer, connection and community in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, written by a core faculty member of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine. Her 2020 essay about dealing with cancer during Covid was published on WBUR’s Cognoscenti.
Lara has been a featured presenter on the podcasts A Little Easier and The 7am Novelist as well as at annual conferences such as the AISNE Health and Wellness Conference, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference (AWP), and as a Health Story Collaborative keynote at the Mind Body Medicine conference co-sponsored by the Henry Benson Institute at MGH and Harvard Medical School. An award-winning short story author, Lara’s fiction has been published in The Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, American Fiction, Confrontation, Indiana Review, and the Chicago Tribune Book Section as well as anthologized in Printers Row. She was awarded a 2010 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Fiction as well as scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. For several years, Lara served on the board of the Friends of the Concord Free Public Library and at GrubStreet, where she taught master fiction workshops for over a decade.
Lara’s personal mission to build compassionate community through co-created mindful wellness practices has led to dozens of collaborations with multiple organizations in Concord and beyond, including the National Philharmonic and Minuteman ARC for the Disabled. In addition to serving as Executive Director of Be Well Be Here, she is also the Curator of the Concord Festival of Authors, and co-creates the Concord Free Public Library’s Authors Series and Mindfulness programming. Lara and her husband of over 30 years are the proud parents of four beloved adult children. She invites us all to explore how experiential integration of wellness practices can enhance our creative process and the well-being of mind, body and spirit.