“Bricks & Briars: Poetry from Growing Up in Athens County”

As a woman in her 20s growing up in Southeast Ohio, I’ve discovered that writing is the best way to express my feelings and my connections with this area. Bricks & Briars is a poetry collection I’ve been working on that I plan on self-publishing this summer. The poems explore the experience of growing up as a woman in the overlooked towns, hills, and heartaches of Southeast Ohio while also exploring the relationships I’ve developed with people in this area across my 28 years of life here. Through poetry, I reflect on the quiet beauty and hard edges I’ve developed through generations before me, complicated love, and the experience of coming of age in this region. These poems move through houses, wilderness, inherited silence, and moments of rebellion, offering a voice to women whose stories are often whispered but rarely amplified.

 

BIO: Born and raised in Southeast Ohio, Haley DeVore has been creating stories since she was little but recently began sharing her writing with others into her later 20s. Her published works include three short stories, “Meet Me in the Fluorescent Glow,” “The Book Cellar,” and “A Stranger I Know Everything About,” and a short collection of poetry titled Poems About You. She is working on another poetry collection titled Bricks and Briars and her first fiction manuscript for her novel Untethered. She proudly calls Athens home.