Melissa Hunter Gurney is a writer, educator, curator and environmental steward.

She is co-founder of Black Land Ownership—a grassroots organization put in place to combat systemic oppression around property ownership in the Americas, the Lo—TEK Institute — a community of knowledge keepers focused on nature based technologies and environmental literacy and the Omni Institute where she engages in educational consulting, college advising and land-based learning initiatives, She believes that being an artist is like being a confluence of rivers—there is one body and through that body an abundance of pathways are born. Each new lineage connected at the core. This is why she writes, paints, teaches, curates, designs, advocates and builds with nature—each project birthed by and connected to the other. Each path harnessing wilderness with the growth of its kin. She says it is, and always will be, the way of The Women. Not surprisingly, her written work tends to explore the multi-faceted experiences of Pan-American women and artists and can be found in various publications both nationally and internationally.