Vila SpiderHawk and her husband live in the woods of Pennsylvania in a log home that they designed.  Their six cats and their many woodland friends provide additional company.  She has a BA in women’s studies and French and did her graduate work in education.  She has taught French in college and in public schools.  While raised in Philadelphia, she has lived in Virginia, Georgia, New York, and Connecticut. 

 Now retired, she has returned to her first love, writing.  She writes for Sage Woman magazine and for The Beltane Papers on a free-lance basis.  SpiderHawk is an avid gardener and a gourmet vegan cook. 

She can be contacted at http://www.vilaspiderhawk.com, where she maintains a reader site with book excerpts and discussions, updated news and announcements, and more.

Hidden Passages and Forest Song Gift Set

Hidden Passages: Tales to Honor the Crones

by Vila SpiderHawk

Hidden Passages is a collection of eight finely crafted stories about strong, loving women in the midst of their crone years, celebrating life and sharing their wisdom, courage, and passion with other women, old and young.

Vila SpiderHawk’s stories celebrate crones in a way that makes the reader feel and remember their own memories of women in their lives. Readers meet Grandmother Spider, Lavinia, Cara, Mima Po, and more. Each of the crones in Hidden Passages share their hearts with readers young and old, through Ms. SpiderHawk and her wonderfully woven tales.

Doubleclick the Video Trailer below to view full size

 

"Vila is breaking some precious ground with her wonderful stories.  Readers will find aspects of themselves here, as Maidens, Mothers, or Crones, as well as inspiring messages of passion, wisdom and magic.  A great read too!" -Shekhinah Mountainwater, author of Ariadne's Thread.

 

“Hidden Passages: Tales to Honor the Crones is populated with wise, skillful women passing on the secrets of seeing beauty in what, at first glance, is not beautiful.  This is an irresistible read for maidens, mothers, and crones alike!”  Smoky Trudeau, author of Redeeming Grace

 

“These stories have deepened my veneration of womankind in all her stages of life.  Those who read this book will find themselves living with more love for life itself.  This book is a gift—a precious and priceless one.”  Esmerelda Little Flame, author of The Temple of the Twelve

 

 

Forest Song: Finding Home

by Vila SpiderHawk

The story of Judy Baumann’s struggle to escape to her true home in the woods and to grow into her power there. A cast of magical characters, including a witch, the witch’s consort, a family of fairies, an ancient oak, and a bevy of animals each help her in this enterprise. 

‘We lived just at the edge of the frontier, as Mama called it, at the border of civilization.  According to her the woods beyond our field was a lawless place, full of perils far worse than I could imagine, and so she made me promise to stay in our back yard or, if I was with my brother or an adult, the field beyond.  But never did she allow me near the woods.  She worried about the forest and other dangers too, man dangers.  That's what she called them.  Man dangers.’ 

The story, situated between Germany and Poland, begins in 1929 and ends in 1933 when Judy becomes a woman.

Forest Song: Finding Home

Video Trailer

Forest Song: Finding Home weaves a wondrous tale of a young girl finding her true home and growing to womanhood in a unique and adventurous tale.  I felt the characters' thrills and despairs, their highs and lows, their breadth and their depth.  Their joys became my joys, their mourning, mine.  All are so beautifully created that each and every one touched my soul.  In Judy’s home, I could feel the wooden floors, the sparseness of decor.  I experienced her mother’s withdrawal from her, yet also her very solid strength.  I felt the cold of the iron fence and smelled the rich pungent earth as Judy walked in the forest.  I warmed by the crackling fire and smelled the delicious soup she ate.  I sang with her, I cried with her, I winced when her fingers hurt from sewing too long.  I also grew with her, hoped with her, and finally, simply loved her.  Forest Song: Finding Home is a book not to be missed by maiden, mother, or crone.  SpiderHawk has done it again!  One more MUST read that will become a classic. 

—Helen Collins, creator, editor, and publisher of Folk Music Ministry Magazine

 

Vila SpiderHawk has rare narrative gifts.  Forest Song: Finding Home sings indeed—with verbal imagery and plot turns that keep you eager for every morsel.

—Jim Mc Conkey, author of Journey to the Far Side of Earth

 

This story is for you who have longed to enter the forest... and never come out. It’s for anyone who has longed to be able to talk with the trees, earth, and animals as his or her best friends. It’s for anyone who has hungered for the wisdom of the wild. If your great treasure is a secret wildness within you, follow Judy into the forest. She will take you to a realm where you can set it free.

—Esmerelda LittleFlame, author of Temple of the Twelve

 

This is a magickal book in every way. Vila SpiderHawk writes like a poet, in beautiful language which is nevertheless fully accessible, never calling attention to itself at the expense of the story. This particular story has a flavour of folk tales. There is a lot of painless teaching here, not only about those old ways of living and interacting with nature, but also about what it is to be human in all its depth and complexity. Nor is she afraid to confront the darker aspects of human nature, which she does with deftness and delicacy whilst never shirking the truth. Overall, her tale is full of sweetness, warmth, and characters we accept as real. As a former children’s librarian and the wife of a children’s author, I know the test of a good book for children or young adults is whether it can be enjoyed by adults too. This is a book to be reveled in at any age!

—Rosemary Nissen-Wade, Author of Secret Leopard

 

Forest Song is a must read for anyone who is more at home among trees which scrape the sky than brick-and-mortar skyscrapers. Here we meet Judy, a young girl who will stop at nothing to escape the iron-gated prison that is her family home for the trees and creatures of the forest, her true home. Vila SpiderHawk’s exquisite prose paints detailed images of Judy’s experience; we feel her every emotion, hear every bird call, smell every earthy scent, experience for ourselves everything Judy experiences as she grows from gawky girl into Wise Woman of the Woods. SpiderHawk truly knows the forest, and does a masterful job of conveying the wisdom you will garner if you listen, just listen, to the music of the trees.

—Smoky Trudeau, author of Redeeming Grace and The Cabin