Tryphena yeboah.

I like to read and write. I like to give and receive hugs. I like to listen. I like to be amazed. I like the freshness of the morning, handwritten letters, the corners of libraries, folk music, long walks, and sitting quietly by myself. I enjoy baking. I like to dance. I make too many to-do lists. I mostly laugh at myself because I am mostly failing because I am mostly learning.

In a lot of ways, I have made my writing a practice of seeking, witnessing, and, especially meaningful to me, a means to learn more about myself, my relationships with others, and our world. There are all kinds of possibilities with a commitment like this—but the most rewarding outcome for me is the risky move toward finding out what I don’t know, even what I don’t wish to know and accept about myself.

My work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Commonwealth Writers, Lit Hub, etc. I have book reviews featured in the Los Angeles Review of Books & Chicago Review of Books. Currently, I live in Athens, where I'm an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing Director at Tennessee Wesleyan University.

“Writing was the only work I did that was for myself and by myself. In the process, one exercises sovereignty in a special way. All sensibilities are engaged, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes sequentially. While I’m writing, all of my experience is vital and useful and possibly important. It may not appear in the work, but it is valuable. Writing gives me what I think dancers have on stage  in their relation to gravity and space and time. It is energetic and balanced, fluid and in repose. And there is always the possibility of growth; I could never hit the highest note so I’d never have to stop.”

Toni Morrison, in conversation with Thomas LeClair/March 20, 1981