Mirabai Starr

Mirabai Starr is an author and teacher of interspiritual contemplative practice who lives in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Born in New York in 1961 and raised partly in Taos, she spent her teenage years at the Lama Foundation, a community open to many faiths, and later spent twenty years lecturing on religion and philosophy at the Taos campus of the University of New Mexico. She first became known for fresh English versions of the Spanish mystics Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, and has since written Wild Mercy, on the women mystics; God of Love, on the common heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam; the memoir Caravan of No Despair; and Ordinary Mysticism (2024).

Her teaching draws on the poetry and lives of mystics from many paths, with a particular eye on the sacred feminine and on loss as a doorway to the holy, a theme shaped by the death of her daughter Jenny in 2001. Gatherings mix readings, silence, sung divine names in several languages, conversation and writing used as a spiritual practice. With the artist Willow Brook she runs Wild Heart, the online home of her membership The Mystic's Way, short self-paced writing journeys and a yearly writing retreat in Mexico, and she leads weekend programmes at Esalen in Big Sur.