I was delivered into being in Man, West Virginia, in the middle of the decade of stark contrasts, aka the 1970s. I cut my teeth on films like Star Wars and the birth of punk rock. But, the move from my mother’s region, the southern West Virginia coalfields, to the homeplace of my father, Dunns, West Virginia, also helped to create the creative. I was that child who reverently searched for four-leaf clovers, drew pictures in the clouds, and made friends with the pine tree in the corner of the yard.

I learned to read earlier than the average, thanks to the Read-Along Sets that were integral to the knowledge of any child of the 1980s. I will forever remember, “You will know it is time to turn the page when you hear the chimes ring like this…” Those stories quickly turned into the likes of Margery Williams’s The Velveteen Rabbit and Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. Both of those tomes still reside on my bookshelf, loving reminders of the beginning of becoming.

Poetry wasn’t just a genre. (I didn’t even know what that word was, meant, or encompassed, then.) Poetry was in my blood. A part of me, like my eye color or my Ellison-esque nose. I would create little verses in my head before I knew how to fully write them down, then I’d speak them out loud, with my parents as my audience. I was a country baby Beat — my basement was my underground Jazz club, replete with cigarette smoke courtesy of my dad.

The PBS show, Reading Rainbow furthered that love of literature. To a shy, Appalachian girl, to see kids (like me!) recommending books on television — it was mind blowing. LeVar Burton is still my hero, to this day. Big surprise that creative writing became my drug of choice, and commas, my new best friend. #TeamOxfordCommaForLife

Another move, to the dear town of Athens, West Virginia, furthered my creativity. I actively pursued the written word every summer — from before sixth grade to before my senior year — in summer Creative Writing Camps hosted at the high school in the neighboring city of Princeton. While other kids were forced to ride the bus to pass math, I chose to accompany them, to learn technique. I became intimately acquainted with authors that I continue to cherish — Shakespeare, Poe, C.S. Lewis, Stephen King. I drank them in like Tang, then attempted to regurgitate them, because what better way exists to honor an inspiration than emulation?

As I grew, poetry became my teacher, my compass, and my therapist — the way I viewed and made sense of the world and circumstance, the dance of head and heart knowledge. It continues to be this. I still hold onto journals filled with those early writings. It is a rare treasure to view, and review, pit stops along your own journey.

I have added many notebooks and journals, since — short stories, short and long poems, novellas, ghost-written memoirs, all self-published. And now, I sit in anticipation of my first traditionally published compilation of poetry through Heathen Poetica. (Anything but traditional, and that’s the way we like it!)

It has been a joy, along life’s path, to discover a chosen family, members of a motley crew of creatives. I hope we can add you, dear readers, to that same family, that same tribe. Because together, we are home.