Carolyn L. Mazloomi

Carolyn L. Mazloomi (née Carolyn Louise Stewart; born August 22, 1948)

Life Carolyn Louise Stewart was born in 1948 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,

Mazloomi has since retired from her job as an aerospace engineer and Federal Aviation Administration crash site investigator. She is married to Iranian engineer Rezvan Mazloomi, and together the family lives in Ohio.

Women of Color Quilters Network In the mid-1980s after trying unsuccessfully to expand her small Los Angeles-based African-American quilting circle, Mazloomi placed an advertisement in Quilter's Newsletter Magazine requesting correspondence with other quilters who shared this frustration. Her advertisement and the resulting correspondence led to the formation of the Women of Color Quilters Network (WOCQN) in 1986,

Quilting Mazloomi works in narrative quilts that tell stories through visuals. Common themes include music, inspired by an aunt who owned a Louisiana juke joint, and the African-American experience during the Civil Rights Movement.

Mazloomi currently serves on the board of directors of the Alliance for American Quilts.

Works authored on quilting Spirits of the Cloth: Contemporary African American Quilts (1998). Threads of Faith: Recent Works from the Women of Color Quilters Network (2004). Textural Rhythms: Quilting the Jazz Tradition (2007). Quilting African American Women's History Our Challenges, Creativity and Champions (2008). The Journey of Hope in America: Quilts Celebrating President Barack Obama (2009).

Awards and honors In 1999, she was awarded the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award for Best Nonfiction book, for her work Spirits of the Cloth: Contemporary African American Quilts. In 2003, Mazloomi was awarded the first Ohio Heritage Fellowship Award. In 2014, Mazloomi was a recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship, specifically the Bess Lomax Hawes Award, bestowed by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.