Devon Koren grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee, where they climbed trees, picked blackberries, slopped hogs, and waded through ice-cold mountain streams. Their mother and grandparents were all avid readers, and taught them the beauty of the written word before they could even speak. They lost themselves in the legends of J.R.R. Tolkien, T.H. White, Peter S. Beagle, and Thomas Burnnett Swann, and they would consume biographies and history books that told stories about the Beatles and the 1960s. At the age of eight, they began filling notebooks with short stories, poetry, and screenplays. They never stopped.
Throughout high school, Devon pursued their writing craft, winning various prizes for their poems and short stories. They began reading Neil Gaiman, Tom Robbins, Douglas Adams, and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and they began writing letters to pen-pals all over the world. They attended the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Humanities in 1995, where they were privileged to study under Mary Szybist and Anna Clark. They also spent a lot of time dressing in black, performing in community theater, working in various community service projects, and playing Live Action Role Playing games with their friends.
Devon was twenty years old when they welcomed their first daughter into the world, and they spent a decade as a single mother. They studied English and Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University, where they received the 2001-2002 McClellan Award. They were also published in several student publications, such as Scribbling Mob, Collage, and The Mockingbird. In 2002, their daughter was diagnosed with autism, and they began chronicling their adventures together online.
Devon completed their Master’s Degree in Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee, where they studied under Michael Knight and Allen Wier. While attending UTK, they fell in love with the scruffy little city of Knoxville, Tennessee, and decided to make it their home. Shortly after graduation, they discovered Twitter, which helped them connect with an amazing network of brilliant friends in the area — including the man who would later become their husband.
Devon currently lives a quiet, hobbit-like lifestyle out “on the ridge” outside Knoxville with their geeky husband and their amazing daughters. They spend their time together experimenting in domesticity, eating amazing food, greeting each day as it comes, and navigating the world of pop culture, video games, and Internet memes. Their house is full of the sound of laughter, singing, toddler squeals, childish monologues, and out-of-context quotations from random YouTube videos, and Devon would not have it any other way.