Courtney Ariel Bowden is a songwriter and writer who thinks and dreams about the impact of relational healing. A graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School with a Master of Divinity and concentrations in Religion, Art & Contemporary Culture and Religion, Gender & Sexuality, Courtney Ariel pursues work at the intersections of artmaking, accompaniment, and scholarship. In community, she works at unlearning oppressive systems and ways of being. The practice of mutuality helps her to imagine and contribute to realities that are hopefully more life-giving. 

Her curiosities about/and commitments to Black women’s relational healing led her to a doctoral program in Religious Studies at Emory University. Honoring her ancestor’s wisdom about the value of community, she approaches her reading and research as an artist-scholar, which is to say, with collaboration and creativity.

Since 2020 she has been the Research Assistant for the Voices From Our America Project. Her academic writing has been published in the Bloomsbury Religion in North America journal. Her public-facing advocacy writing has been featured by Sojourners (Sojo.net), CNN, The Tennessean, and Harper's Bazaar. Her original music can be found on streaming platforms, including songs she has co-written (Alex Blue’s “May It Change You,” 2024), or that she has written (Alex G’s “I Won’t,” 2020). You can hear her live at local venues.

A novice but enthusiastic watcher of birds and trees in the Southeastern region of the U.S., Courtney Ariel still holds the swaying palms of Southern California, the lull and roar of the pacific ocean, at the core of her being, always.

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