Eleanor Lumsden '98

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Eleanor Lumsden '98

Tags: Writer, Professor, Actor, Curator, Essayist, Creative Nonfiction, Intercultural storyteller, Film, Filmmaking, Community Arts, Dialogue, Cultural Exchange

You in 50 words or less: I'm a writer and intercultural consultant exploring migration, identity, belonging, and the stories we carry across borders. Through essays, books, and Atlas Round Table, I create spaces where people reflect, converse, and write together across cultures.

Pronouns: She/her

Department: Politics

Certificate(s): African American Studies,Other

Bio

Eleanor Lumsden is a writer and intercultural consultant whose work explores migration, identity, belonging, and the stories people carry across borders.

After 14 years teaching law, she left academia to build a portfolio career centered on writing, dialogue, and cultural understanding. Born in Jamaica and educated in the United States, she has lived and worked across multiple countries, experiences that continue to shape both her writing and consulting.

She is the founder of The Cultural Proficiency Exchange (CPX Exchange), where she writes and speaks about culture, leadership, and decision-making in an increasingly interconnected world. Her personal publication, Over the Tejo, explores leaving home, reinvention, and the search for home.

Eleanor is also the creator of Atlas Round Table, an international literary salon that brings together small groups from around the world to read, reflect, converse, and write around shared themes.

She is currently completing a collection of essays and developing a memoir-inspired book alongside a feature film exploring migration, freedom, and the search for home.

Now based in Madeira, Portugal, she is building communities where ideas become conversations and conversations become community. She believes some of life's most meaningful conversations begin with a well-chosen story.

Artist Statement

My work explores belonging and the invisible stories people carry with them.

I write essays because they allow me to explore the complexity of being human. I am interested in the moment when someone says, "I thought I was the only one."

That impulse led me to create Atlas Round Table, an international literary salon where curated texts become the starting point for conversation, reflection, and creation. I believe stories are not only things we tell; they are places where strangers become collaborators, neighbors become friends, and ideas become communities.

Whether writing essays, developing books and film, or bringing people together in conversation, I want to know:

How can we see one another and ourselves more deeply?

If my work has a single ambition, it is to leave people feeling less alone.

Featured Project(s)

I. Atlas Round Table

An international literary salon bringing together small groups from around the world to read, reflect, converse, and write across cultures.

Inspired by the long tradition of literary salons, Atlas explores themes such as migration, belonging, memory, freedom, identity, and home through carefully curated texts.

The inaugural online edition, Leaving Home, launches in July 2026.

Currently seeking:

participants

partner venues

literary collaborators

cross-cultural programming opportunities

II. Memoir / Feature Film (working title withheld)

A memoir-inspired book and feature film exploring migration, reinvention, and the search for home through the relationship between a mother and daughter rebuilding their lives across continents.

Seeking:

filmmakers

producers

literary representation

creative collaborators

I’d like to:

  • Speak on a panel

  • Conduct a workshop