It is not every day that you encounter a woman whose words can move mountains, whose journey carries the weight of generations, and whose courage unfolds line by line in verses both tender and unflinching. Barbara Marie Minney, a seventh-generation Appalachian and native of West Virginia, is one such woman. Now living in Tallmadge, Ohio, she is an award-winning poet, writer, speaker, teaching artist, and quiet activist. Her work has been featured in Politico, The Buckeye Flame, Gargoyle Magazine, The Gasconade Review, and numerous anthologies amplifying female and queer voices, including Woman Scream: The International Poetry Anthology of Female Voices. Barbara is the author of four powerful poetry collections, including If There’s No Heaven, winner of the 2020 Poetry Is Life Book Award.
A retired attorney with a distinguished 36-year legal career, Barbara now devotes herself to writing poems that reflect her life as both a transgender woman and an Appalachian storyteller. Her voice, shaped by years of personal searching and spiritual resilience, is personal, raw, and deeply human. In today’s conversation, two women sit down, one a blogger and interviewer, the other a poet and quiet revolutionary. We talk about poetry, the long road to womanhood, the bittersweet aftermath of transition, and the tension of inhabiting identities that don’t always fit into simple categories. Barbara and I meet not just as interviewer and guest, but as sisters in experience, exchanging reflections that come only from living a truth that had to be fought for, sometimes silently, sometimes in verse, but always bravely. Let’s begin.
