I write my way through these mountains

Devon Koren grew up in the mountains of East Tennessee, where she climbed trees, picked blackberries, slopped hogs, and waded through ice-cold mountain streams. Her mother and grandparents were all avid readers, and taught her the beauty of the written word before she could even speak. She lost herself in the legends of J.R.R. Tolkien, T.H. White, Peter S. Beagle, and Thomas Burnnett Swann, and she would consume biographies and history books that told stories about the Beatles and the 1960s. At the age of eight, she began filling notebooks with short stories, poetry, and screenplays. She never stopped.

Throughout high school, Devon pursued her writing craft, winning various prizes for her poems and short stories. She began reading Neil Gaiman, Tom Robbins, Douglas Adams, and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and she began writing letters to pen-pals all over the world. She attended the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Humanities in 1995, where she was privileged to study under Mary Szybist and Anna Clark. She 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 her friends.

Devon was twenty years old when she welcomed her first daughter into the world, and she spent a decade as a single mother. She studied English and Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University, where she received the 2001-2002 McClellan Award. She was also published in several student publications, such as Scribbling Mob, Collage, and The Mockingbird. In 2002, her daughter was diagnosed with autism, and she began chronicling their adventures together online. 

Devon completed her Master’s Degree in Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee, where she studied under Michael Knight and Allen Wier. While attending UTK, she fell in love with the scruffy little city of Knoxville, Tennessee, and decided to make it her home. Shortly after graduation, she discovered Twitter, which helped her connect with an amazing network of brilliant friends in the area — including the man who would later become her husband.

Devon currently lives a quiet, hobbit-like lifestyle out “on the ridge” outside Knoxville with her geeky husband and her 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.