Luanna Peterson is a Hawaiʻi-based organizer, educator, and storyteller committed to self-determination and collective liberation. She is the co-founder of Weaving Our Stories, a Hawaiʻi-rooted abolitionist program that uses storytelling as a transformative
pathway toward belonging, healing, and systemic change. In 2024, Weaving Our Stories published the Return to Belonging anthology through Daraja Press—a global collaborative project edited by Luanna and featuring contributions from BIPOC writers worldwide.

With a background spanning community intervention program design and evaluation, culturally responsive STEM education, and social justice–centered creative writing and arts workshops, Luanna’s work bridges community practice with political education.

Across youth programming, educator collaboration, and public-facing storytelling spaces, she focuses on how systems shape people’s lives, and how communities build conditions for safety, care, and thriving beyond exploitation, punishment, and exclusion.

She holds a dual Bachelor's degree in Global Studies and Communications and a Master’s in Culture, Ecology, and Sustainable Community, with an emphasis on Ecological Agriculture. Her career spans multiple fields, both domestically and internationally, including social justice-focused art and film projects, community intervention programs, and curriculum design.

Her writing spans multiple genres, from poetry and nonfiction to speculative fiction. She recently self-published Noel Beats The Blues with Good News, a chapter book about resilience, community, and hope, following a young girl’s journey through landscapes of struggle as she discovers the power of tenacity, connection, and small acts of courage.

She is currently working on Quitting Earth: Silent Ascension, the first novel in a speculative fantasy series that blends ancestral magic, cosmic stakes, and ecological reckoning. Set in a post-apocalyptic world on the brink of collapse, it explores liberation, cultural memory, and intergenerational healing. Inspired by Black feminist traditions of Deep Sighting, the story follows Lionel Berry, an 11-year-old magi-in-training, who must navigate a battle for survival against the Acataeon, cybernetic overlords who hoard resources, suppress culture, and weaponize memory itself. But Lionel’s journey is only one thread in a larger struggle for existence—a battle waged across generations and dimensions, where belonging and survival become acts of defiance and hope.

Through her work, Luanna seeks to engage communities in deeper learning, build collective memory through storytelling, and empower individuals to reclaim and reshape the narratives that define them.