Carla Fernandez

CreativeMornings and L'Alliance New York present Carla Fernandez!

For too long, grief has been pushed to the edges of culture. But in 2025, being in right relationship to your grief is no longer a soft mental health cliché; it’s a radical act and a critical life skill. In her talk, Carla Fernandez builds on learnings in her debut book Renegade Grief and over a decade as cofounder of nationwide peer support organization The Dinner Party. Offering pathways through peer support, creative care practices and allyship, Carla’s talk will help you rewire personal and collective patterns around grief. The result? A more connected, resilient and inspired life, even if it requires us to get a little renegade.

About Carla Fernandez

Carla Fernandez’s work focuses on how circles come together to foster collective care and change culture when a new status quo is called for. She is the cofounder of The Dinner Party, a national network of peer-support circles for young adult grievers, featured in The New York Times, NPR, Oprah Daily, and cited in multiple books. In addition to her work in grief, Carla partners with a range of clients through her community design studio as an impact strategist and facilitator, particularly on initiatives related to climate change, democracy, and the arts. Carla is a senior fellow with USC’s Annenberg School Innovation Lab and a Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Scholar in Social Entrepreneurship at NYU. She divides her time between the Hudson Valley and Joshua Tree with her husband Ivan and terrier Biscotti.

🎵 Performance by Gideon Irving

Gideon Irving has played and stayed in over 700 homes around the world. A purveyor of “Stove Top Folk” which he describes as “a bit of this and some of that”, he has toured by bicycle, Roller Blades with modified shopping cart, horse and pack horse and even on occasion in vehicular automobiles. His home shows have had theatrical runs at NYC’s Rattlestick Theater, The Bric, Londons SoHo Theater and twice to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He operates in a variety of creative capacities under various secret monikers and believes in the power of unreasonableness and short naps.