China Galland, MA, is a writer, filmmaker, riveting storyteller, university lecturer, pilgrim, and former wilderness guide. She has lectured at Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Prescott College, and others. She has led pilgrimages to Nepal, India, France, and Spain, and traveled in Eastern Europe and Latin America. She has appeared on Good Morning America, Bloomberg TV, PBS, NPR, and PRI’s To the Best of Our Knowledge.
China's book on international women activists, The Bond Between Women: A Journey to Fierce Compassion, was a finalist for the Best Spiritual Book award from Books for a Better Life. A Hedgebrook Institute’s Residency Award for women writers helped her complete the book. China has been a Professor-in-Residence at CARE, the Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education, at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.
China is a native Texan and prize-winning author of nonfiction, including Love Cemetery: Unburying the Secret History of Slaves and Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna. She is currently completing a documentary film, Resurrecting Love, sponsored by Fractured Atlas. The documentary grew out of the controversy over access, race, and private property that was ignited by the publication of Love Cemetery. Statewide hearings followed. Though a potent national controversy remains over cemeteries with the remains of enslaved people, Texas cemetery law was changed as the result of her book.
China received the prestigious national Courage of Conscience Award from the Peace Abbey at the Harvard Foundation. Students, debaters, and choir members of historically black Wiley College (home of The Great Debaters) and Marshall, Texas volunteers sparked the interest of predominantly white East Texas Baptist University students to join the work. China’s documentary gives us a little-known avenue to work on healing racism and a radically new way to teach American history.
China was also the first woman Assistant to the City Manager of Dallas, Texas, and Director of the Citizen Assistance Office, and she organized the first National Conference of Citizen Assistance Offices in the U.S