Dawn Downey is the author of the essay collections: Blindsided, Searching for My Heart, From Dawn to Daylight, and Stumbling toward the Buddha. Her work has also been published in Noteworthy: the Journal Blog; Persimmon Tree; punctuate.; River, Blood, and Corn Literary Journal; The Resilient Activist; and ZORA. A Downey day begins with meditation, followed by yoga—which moved from studio to dining room, after yoga teachers moved online in the year of self-quarantine. To protect her writing time from the temptations of the internet, she deploys an app that blocks political websites from her computer. She cheats by checking her phone. Kansas City, Missouri is her home.