Aspen Matis

I am the author of Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir, an Amazon First Reads pick for May 2020. Called “fearless…A beautifully written story of inspiration, courage, and ultimate transformation” by Booklist, the book was a #1 Amazon bestseller in memoirs. Author Deepak Chopra said the memoir “will open the door to empathy, compassion, and healing.” Novelist Aimee Bender called Your Blue Is Not My Blue “gorgeous…a gripping read that wrestles honestly and sensitively with the ways we connect and the ways we miss one another.”

My first book, the critically acclaimed memoir Girl in the Woods, was published by HarperCollins in 2015. Called “a powerful read” by O, The Oprah Magazine, the book made The Guardian's annual top 50 list. The New York Times named me “a hero,” which was among the greatest honors of my life. Television rights for Girl in the Woods were purchased by New Normal.

My short-form writing has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Tin House, Psychology Today, Salon, Cosmopolitan, Lit Hub, and Marie Claire.
The face of RAINN (the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network)’s 2015, 2016, and 2017 campaigns and a member of PEN America, RAINN’s Speakers Bureau, and HarperCollins’ Speakers Bureau, I have become an advocate for trauma survivors. I am donating 5% of Girl in the Woods’ profits to RAINN.

In 2016, I was named (alongside Chelsea Clinton and Katie Couric) a Mogul influencer, one of the 2,000 most influential women in the world.

In the spring of 2017, I taught policy reform in two seminars at Columbia University. In teaching, my objective is to prompt critical thinking in hopes of eliciting some innovative adjudication-model concepts that, in their application, might create actual, human improvement: a more humane justice system. Specifically, we were revising Sexual Violence Response protocol at the eight Ivy League universities.

I am the Founder and Creator of The Human Network, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) democratized think tank, for peace. In the fall of 2017, Deepak Chopra joined our team as our Head of Education, calling The Human Network the “fulfillment of our collective dream.”

I now live in New York City, where I visit cute cafés, write madly, and read philosophy, following the thread of my fascination.